Intel Remains Mum on Pentium 4 Successor

TAIPEI -- A senior Intel executive confirmed Tuesday that the company is working on a project code-named Nehalem but would not comment on details of the project or whether the code name refers to a successor for the company's Pentium 4 processor.

Nehalem was first mentioned in an interview with Intel engineer Doug Carmean posted on--and later removed from--Intel's Web site. In that interview, Carmean said that Nehalem was a chip based on a new architecture that is different from the Pentium 4 and would likely begin shipping in 2004. That has led to speculation among some observers that Nehalem could be a successor to the Pentium 4.

"Nehalem is a fine word that people have tried to associate things to, but we won't comment on it," said Louis Burns, vice president and co-general manager of Intel's Desktop Platforms Group, speaking to the press at the Intel Developer Forum here. "It's out in the future; we'll just leave it at that."

Pentium's Future

Whatever Nehalem may be, Intel sees plenty of performance headroom left in the Pentium 4 architecture and plans to develop additional chips based on that design.

In 2003, the company plans to release an updated version of the Pentium 4, code-named Prescott, which will be produced using a 90-nanometer process and incorporate several improvements over existing Pentium 4 models, Burns said.

Prescott will not be the last Pentium 4 chip, Burns said.

"We will continue to enhance and improve the [Pentium 4] architecture and, like I said, there's certainly nothing to say about Nehalem," he said.