Then, AMD surprised industry observers by launching their Athlon 700 CPU earlier than expected in late September, right at about the time that Intel debuted their own .25 micron 633MHz Pentium III.

Reeling from the Athlon introduction onslaught and publicly perceived MHz gap, Intel's four-star General, Craig Barrett, challenged his company to push for a 733MHz Pentium III to arrive on the launch date for the new Coppermine .18 micron line, which was to be in late October.

Intel's engineers achieved their management's goal, and in the second part of October they launched the world's first 733MHz desktop CPU.

Much to Intel's chagrin, AMD responded to the P3-733 by introducing the world's first 750MHz CPU, the Athlon 750, just four weeks later.

Now the fur is really flying, and thanks to their previously mentioned production capacity advantage, Intel has rapidly accelerated their roadmap again, and is today announcing the availability of not only a 750MHz Pentium III, but also two 800MHz models (one uses a 100MHz bus speed, the other 133MHz).

Phew.

For those keeping score, this brings the total amount of new CPUs introduced by Intel and AMD to approximately 21 for the period of August 1st to December 19th.

And we're not done yet folks.

Believe it or not, AMD is also announcing that their 800MHz Athlon CPU is completed, and we think it will start shipping in OEM PC systems shortly into January 2000.

Some industry observers argue that the rapid CPU introductions from AMD and Intel can whimsically be compared to the military arms race in the 1970s and 1980s between the Soviet Union and the United States. They state in this example that history shows that the company with the most production capability and greatest financial resources will ultimately manage to overcome their competitor by out spending them.

Others say that there's actually enough room in the PC OEM market for two dominant CPU suppliers to flourish, enjoying the large volumes that low, medium, and high cost PCs produce.

The year 2000 will see a major amount of escalation in the battle for high end market share between Intel and AMD, as both are accelerating their own product roadmaps to accommodate earlier than expected product introductions throughout the year.

No matter what happens and who ends up having the best year financially in 2000, it certainly will be interesting to watch the two companies square off for a full 12 months.