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Milestones. On the road to faster CPU speeds, no clock speed is truly more important than any other. Reaching 25MHz was a tremendous accomplishment, as was reaching 233MHz, 600MHz and any other clock speed. But some speeds we decide to mark as milestones. Intel has reached one of these arbitrary milestones with their new Pentium III 1GHz, which we've reviewed for you here.

The following is an excerpt from last month's "Private Eye" IDF (Intel Developer Forum) report,

"Somewhat closer to reality (in fact by the second half of 2000), Senior VP Albert Yu showed off a 1GHz "Pentium III" (sans the KroyoTech vapor-phase refrigeration this time) emphasizing that Intel has nailed the silicon for a month prior to the show and that the CPU in question was not "just a proliferation of a new design". Dell, Gateway, Compaq et .al will begin sampling 1GHz PIII's by March according to several sources."

Little did anyone suspect that the trigger would be pulled by Intel this early in March.? But here we are at the start of March and Intel's fastest CPU to date is hitting the pr wire with announcements from IBM, Dell and HP expected to follow shortly…