Intel puts back Pentium 4 Xeon launch

'Packaging issues' to blame

Updated Intel has been forced to delay today's introduction of Foster, its Pentium 4-based Xeon workstation and server processor, due to "packaging issues".

Apparently, there's a problem with the daughtercard and related components onto which the CPU is mounted - all the stuff hidden away in those black boxes Intel now ships its processors in.

An Intel spokesman confirmed the delay, and was keen to stress that the fault was not a silicon problem, that a solution had already been found and the company's customers had been notified.

However, he added, implementing the fix will take a little while and so Intel has been forced to put back the launch to the end of May.

That's only three weeks off, but the cost to Intel could be considerable. By the sounds of it, the problem is a relatively recent discovery and who knows how many Foster Xeons have been packaged up inside duff units during initial production runs. Intel said that the cost arising from the glitch

According to Intel, the P4 Xeon was due to ship today at speeds of "equal to or greater than 1.4GHz". This CPU is aimed at single- and dual- processor systems.

According to the company's server and workstation processor roadmap, the multi-processor version is expected in Q4, at 1.6GHz and up and with 512KB or 1MB of on-die L3 cache. ®