Willamete

Willamette, project code name for the first Pentium 4 architecture implementation, experienced long delays in completion of its design process. The project was started in 1998, when Intel saw the Pentium II as their permanent line. At that time, the Willamette core was expected to operate at frequencies of around 1 GHz, maximum. However, Willamette release delays saw the introduction of the Pentium-III prior to its completion. Since the radical differences in these architectures meant Intel could not market Willamette as a Pentium III, it was named Pentium 4.

In November 2000, Intel released the Willamette-based Pentium 4 at speeds of 1.4 and 1.5 GHz. Most industry experts regarded the initial release as a stopgap product, introduced before it was truly ready. According to these experts, the Pentium 4 was released because the competing Thunderbird-based AMD Athlon was outperforming the aging Pentium III, and further improvements to the P-III were not yet possible. This Pentium 4 was produced using a 0.18 micrometer (180 nm) process and initially used Socket 423, with later revisions moving to Socket 478. These variants were identified by the Intel product codes 80528 and 80531 respectively.

On the test bench, the Willamette was somewhat disappointing to analysts in that not only was it unable to outperform the Athlon and the highest-clocked Pentium IIIs in all testing situations, it was not clearly superior to even the budget segment'sAmd Duron. Although introduced at a price of US$819 (in 1000 unit quantities), it sold at a modest but respectable rate, handicapped somewhat by the requirement of relatively expensive Rambus Dynamic RAM (RDRAM). The Pentium III remained Intel's top selling chip, with the Athlon also selling slightly better than the Pentium 4.

In January 2001, a still slower 1.3 GHz model was added to the range, but over the next twelve months, Intel gradually started reducing AMD's leadership in performance. April 2001 brought the 1.7 GHz P4, the first one to provide performance clearly superior to the old Pentium III. July saw 1.6 and 1.8 GHz models and in August 2001, Intel released 1.9 and 2.0 GHz Pentium 4s. In the same month, they released the 845 Chip Setthat supported much cheaper PC 133 SDRAM instead of RDRAM. While SDRAM was much slower than RDRAM and severely hampered the bandwidth-hungry Pentium 4, the fact that it was so much cheaper caused the Pentium 4's sales to grow considerably. The new chipset allowed the P4 to displace the Pentium III virtually overnight, becoming the top-selling processor on the market.

The Willamette code name is derived from the Willamette Valley region of Oregeon, where a large number of Intel manufacturing facilities are located