Intel to Upgrade Desktop Pentium 4 Next Year

Chip-making giant Intel Corp. plans to upgrade its flagship Pentium 4 processor for desktop computers next year and make another version available for laptops in coming weeks.

The desktop Pentium 4, code-named Prescott, will incorporate a new technology called hyper-threading that tricks the operating system into thinking it is running on two processors instead of one.

The company also demonstrated a 4-gigahertz Pentium 4, which is expected to be available next year. Currently, the Pentium 4 line tops out at 2.2 GHz.

Intel also plans to release Pentium 4-based mobile processors that run at greater than 1.5 GHz.