At this year's IDF, Intel sought to reassert itself as the leading technological innovator in the semiconductor industry. From displaying the first actual non-simulated IA-64 Merced platform (running Windows64 no less) to the introduction of their proprietary NPSA "power supply of the future", Intel has never reached for so many simultaneous high-level goals.

In the mainstream arena, the conference was abuzz with the disclosure by various publications that Intel's .18 micron "Coppermine" CPUs were going to be arriving in the marketplace sooner than initially thought.

According to reports leaked last week by several online publications, Coppermine will be released as a five CPU package sometime in October. The package, as described by the groups that broke the story, is as follows:

P3-500/100
P3-533/133
P3-550/100
P3-600/133
P3-667/133

It seems that both buyers and retailers alike are going to have to maintain a careful watch on which CPUs they select for their system upgrades, as there will possibly be some serious inventory cross-over as the .18 micron Coppermine models intersect with existing .25 micron Katmai P3s. Intel will likely resort to some sort of descriptive letter-based naming system for each CPU, as they did previously with the Celeron 300 and Celeron 300 "A" parts when both of those CPUs were simultaneously in the channel.

We also heard several rumors of both 700/100 and 733/133 Coppermine high-end CPUs possibly debuting in early November, but we were unable to substantiate the details by the show's end.