What is the Intel PIII Microprocessor?
The PIII is a modified PII, which is a modified Pentium Pro. The PIII has a few additional instructions, most noticably the serial number is now encoded in the PIII. Also added, are a few additional MMX-style instructions that will be in use in the future, but not the too near future. The big difference is the speed of the PIII. The PIII is available in speeds up to 600MHz, with 800 MHz promised by this fall! Note that the cache within the PIII operates at one-half the clocking frequency so a higher external clock does mean that the microprocessor operates faster even though it still uses the 100MHz bus for its connection to the memory system. It is hoped that sometime in the near future Intel will release a chip set that supports the 133MHz memory bus. Memory manufacturer’s have already released SDRAM that operates at 133MHz so how far off is the PIII that operates with a 133MHz memory bus? Yes, the cache is still 512K bytes as in the PII microprocessor. copyright 1999 by Barry B.
