Pentium III

Also known as Intel Pentium III, Pentium 3, Intel Pentium 3

line of desktop and mobile microprocessors produced by Intel

Key facts

Launched: February 28, 1999
Discontinued: April 23, 2004 (for desktop units) , May 18, 2007 (for mobile units) , July 14, 2009 (end of life)
Marketed by: Intel
Designed by: Intel
Common manufacturer: Intel
Product code: Katmai: 80525 Coppermine: 80526 Coppermine T: 80533 Tualatin: 80530
Max cpu clock rate: 450 MHz to 1.4 GHz
Fsb speeds: 100 MT/s to 133 MT/s
Transistors: Katmai: 9.5 million Coppermine: 28 million Tualatin: 47 million
Sockets: Slot 1 Socket 370 Socket 495 (mobile) Socket 479 (mobile)
L1 cache: 32 KB (16 KB data + 16 KB instructions)
L2 cache

~17 min read

Article

The Pentium III (marketed as Intel Pentium III Processor, informally PIII or P3 ) brand refers to Intel's 32-bit x86 desktop and mobile CPUs based on the sixth-generation P6 microarchitecture introduced on February 28, 1999.

The brand's initial processors were largely based on the cores of the earlier Klamath (350 nm)/Deschutes (250 nm) Pentium II processors. The most notable differences were the addition of the Streaming SIMD Extensions (SSE) instruction set (to accelerate floating point and parallel calculations), and the introduction of a controversial serial number embedded in the chip during manufacturing (absent on Tualatin and later Intel processors).