Today's Chips: Pentium III

February 26,1999

Intel launched their newest microprocessor in early 1999.  The Pentium III contains 9.5 million individual transistors on a silicon wafer less than an inch-by-inch square.  The chip costs between $500 and $700, depending on its speed.  That's not substantially more than what the first integrated circuits sold for in the 1960s -- with only ten transistors on a slice. It's the speed and complexity of chips like this that enable computers to handle all the audio, video, graphics, and animations of today's software, games, and web sites.