PC Hardware in a Nutshell, 3rd Edition

Pentium III

The Pentium III, Intel’s final sixth-generation processor, began shipping in February 1999. The Pentium III has been manufactured in numerous variants, including speeds from 450 MHz to 1.4 GHz (Intel defines 1 GHz as 1000 MHz), two bus speeds (100 MHz and 133 MHz), four packages (SECC, SECC2, FC-PGA, and FC-PGA2), and the following three cores:

Pentium III (Katmai core)

Initial Pentium III variants use the Katmai core, essentially an enhanced Deschutes with the addition of 70 new Streaming SIMD instructions (formerly called Katmai New Instructions or KNI and known colloquially as MMX/2) that improve 3D graphics rendering and speech processing. They use the 0.25μ process, operate at 2.0V core voltage (with some versions requiring marginally higher voltage), use a 100 or 133 MHz FSB, incorporate 512 KB four-way set associative L2 cache running at half CPU speed, and have glueless support for two-way SMP. Katmai-core processors were made in SECC2 (Slot 1/SC242) at 450, 500, 550, and 600 MHz in 100 MHz FSB variants, and at 533 and 600 MHz in 133 MHz FSB variants.

Pentium III (Coppermine core)

Later Pentium III variants use the Coppermine core, which is essentially a refined version of the Katmai core. Later Coppermine processors use the updated Coppermine-T core. Coppermine processors use the 0.18μ process, which reduces die size, heat production, and cost. They operate at nominal 1.6V core voltage (with faster versions requiring marginally higher voltage), are available at ...