>
> > Of course, this is kind of the last hurrah for
>the Socket 7 motherboards. Socket 370 is the
>wave of the future. I'm waiting for Merced
>still!
> >
>
> I read an interesting article a month ago or so,
>which specilated on the possibility of Intel
>moving their Pentium III line back from Slot 1 to
>Socket 370 in the future, following the
>transition from 512K of in-package L2 cache to
>256K of on-die L2 cache. This would make the
>processors cheaper to produce, and it would be
>pretty ironic, considering the way everyone
>bally-hooed Socket 370 as a cheesy, worthless
>Intel marketing gimmick to restrict the
>performance of their "Basic PC" processor, the
>Celeron.

What I've read is that it's definite. It's coming out now that the Slot architecture was never planned as anything more than an intermediary step between Socket 7 and Socket 370. Intel just couldn't figure out how to put all the L2 cache on die, so they put it in that huge brick thing and marketed the PII that way. Now that they've apparently got the process down, they're drifting back towards the Socket design. All the newer Celeron chips are just Socket 370 chips on a Slot 1 card, so that it can interface with Slot 1 motherboards.