The Pentium® II/Xeon/Celeron Roadmap

The following is a list of the major milestones in the Pentium® II's evolution:

• The original Pentium® II was based on the .28μm Klamath core and had a FSB speed of 66MHz.

• Deschutes was based on the 0.25 μm process and had a 100MHz FSB (as did all subsequent Pentium® II processors).

• Tonga was the mobile version of the Pentium® II and was based on the 0.25μm process.

• Covington was the first Celeron processor. Intel® found themselves in the position of losing market share to AMD because it did not have a small form factor, low-cost processor that would fit well into small footprint machines. While engineering worked on the development of such a processor, Covington was introduced as the short-term solution. Basically, the L2 Cache was removed from the Pentium® II processor allowing the cost and the cartridge size to be reduced. Unfortunately, the removal of the L2 Cache resulted in a processor with reduced performance.

• Mendocino was the first real Celeron processor. It was socketed rather than a cartridge, had a 128KB L2 Cache integrated on the processor die, a full-speed BSB between the processor core and the L2 Cache, and the FSB arbitration scheme only supported one processor (rather than two as was the case with the Pentium® II).

• The first Xeon processor represented a repackaging of the Pentium® II processor. For more information, refer to “Pentium® II Xeon Features” on page 719.

• Dixon was the final Celeron based on the Pentium® II technology. It was socketed rather than a cartridge, had a 256KB L2 Cache integrated on the processor die, a full-speed BSB between the processor core and the L2 Cache, and the FSB arbitration scheme only supported one processor (rather than two as was the case with the Pentium® II).