Following AMD's announcement of a real 1GHz Athlon, Intel has finally levelled the processor playing field with a Pentium III running at 1000MHz.

The move is the latest in what could be described as a game of corporate catch-up by the US chip giant.

The latest Pentium III is based on 0.18 micron "Coppermine" technology, and features 256Kb of full-speed cache rather than the 512Kb of half-processor speed memory, used in older non-Coppermine chips.

Interestingly, Intel's official announcement of a 1GHz processor came before it was in a position to put its 866MHz and 850MHz Pentium III processors on sale.

Meanwhile, the chairman of AMD, WJ Sanders III, compared his company's launch of the 1GHz Athlon with one of mankind's greatest achievements.

"Introduction of a PC processor capable of executing one billion clock cycles per second is our industry's equivalent of breaking the sound barrier," he said.