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The Celeron is a budget x86 microprocessor introduced by Intel in August 1998 based on the Pentium II processor. Later versions were based on the Pentium III and Pentium 4 designs.
The original Celeron was introduced by Intel in response to the company's loss of low-end market share to rival AMD's K6 processor line and other competers such as Cyrix's 6x86 and IDT's Winchip. In the beginging they were a differnt design from the Pentium IIs, as time progressed Intel used mainstream processor designs, that were altered, to reduce their performance.
The first Celerons (Covington) were a marketplace failure. They were so cripled that they were practically unusable. Future designs sold better and have been a sucess for Intel.
The lack of L2 cache caused the "Covington" Celerons to be failures in the marketplace. Although they made good processors for computer games because of their powerful floating-point performance, the lack of an L2 cache made them very poor performers in Windows and business applications.
The Medocino processors came in speeds of 300, 333, 366, 400, 433, 466, 500, and 533 MHz. They all ran on the 66 MHz FSB. Since the 300 MHz Mendocino overlapped with the Covington at that speed, it was given the extension of "A" to its name; It is referred to as a Celeron 300A Mhz. The Celeron 300 MHz would be the Covington based processor. The processors have come in the Slot 1 and Socket 370 formats. The 433 MHz processor was the last speed to come in both Slot 1 and Socket 370. The higher speeds only came in a PPGA Socket 370 format. The Mendocino also came in a mobile form. Its speeds ranged from 266 to 466 MHz, with speeds of 266, 300, 333, 366, 400, 433, 466 MHz.I do not know the socket/format that the Mobile Celeron came in, someone kindly fill it in if they know it and remove my notation here
The Mendocino was a exceptional processor for the enthusiast market. For they soon discovered that the 300 MHz Celeron-A Medocino could easily be made to run at 450 MHz simply by increasing the Front Side Bus speed from the stock 66 MHz to the 100 MHz spec of the mainstream Pentium II. At this speed, the Celeron rivaled the fastest available x86 processors in the world.
The Coppermine-128 series began at 533 MHz and ending at 1100 MHz. The series began on the 66 MHz FSB with speeds of 533, 566, 600, 633, 667, 700, 733, and 766 MHz. On January 3,2001 starting with the 800 MHz speed, the Coppermine-128 Celeron procesors would work on the 100 MHzFSB and all higher speeds would work on the 100 MHz FSB.
The 100 MHz FSB Coppemine-128 Celerons came at speeds of 800, 850, 900, 950, 1000, and 1100 MHz.
The Tualerons were identical to their fully-fledged Pentium III Tualatin sibling, except that the Tualerons ran on a 100 MHz FSB while the Pentium III ran on the 133 MHz FSB. This made then exceptional overclockers, since they had higher multiplers and users could put them on the 133 MHz FSB easily.
The Tualerons had the same 256KB of L2 Cache as the Desktop Pentium III Tualatin, which also contain 256KB of L2 cache.
see also: List of Intel microprocessors
P6 Class Celerons
Covington
The first Celerons released were code-named "Covington". They came at speeds of 266 and 300 MHz and were identical to the then curent Pentium II except that they lacked any Level 2 (L2) cache. They came in the Slot 1 format.Mendocino
Several months later, Intel discontinued the Covington Core Celeron processor and introduced the "Celeron-A" based on the "Mendocino" core. This processor was identical to the Covington except for the addition of a 128K L2 cache on the processor core. This configuration was unlike the Pentium II's L2 cache configuration. For cost saving purposes Intel decided to place the L2 cache on seperate chips next to the processor core. This cache ran at 1/2 the speed of the processor. Since the Mendocino Celerons contained L2 inside the processor and it ran at full speed it offered performance comparable to the Pentium II at the same speeds. Although Mendocino had 1/4 of the L2 Cache that the Pentium II did.Coppermine-128
When Intel reached the end of the Medocino, they created the "Coppermine-128" or by its less frequently used name "Celeron II". This Pentium III Coppermine derivative processor was released in March 2000. The difference between the regular Coppermine Pentium III and Coppermine-128 that the Coppermine-128 had half the L2 cache of the Coppermine Pentium III 128 vs 256 KB. Both were on-die, as that was a feature of the Coppermine core that the Coppermine Pentium III and Coppermine-128 Celeron shared. The Coppermine was used well into 2002. The Coppermine-128s all came in the FCPGA Socket 370 format, same format that the Coppermine Pentium IIIs used.Tualatin Celerons
The next series of Celerons were based on Pentium III Tualatin Core, which was made with a 0.13 micrometre process. They were nicknamed "Tualeron" - a mix of the word Tualatin and Celeron. The series began at 1000 MHz and 1100 MHz and they were given the extension "A" to their name to differentiate them from their older "Coppermine-128" 0.18 micrometre based Celerons processors at the same speeds. The Tualerons further came in 1200, 1300, and 1400 MHz speeds. The "Coppermine-128" processors did not come in these speeds and therefore the Tualerons did not have the "A" extension at those speeds.Netburst Class Celerons
The next series of Celeron processors were based off of the Pentium 4 "Willamette" core. These are nicknamed "Celeron 4". They have 128K of L2 cache instead of the regular Pentium 4's 256K, but this severely crippled their performance. They are a favored processor in the enthusiast market, because like the old 300A, they can run well above their rated speeds.External link
