Celeron

Celeron was a series of IA-32 and x86-64 computer microprocessors targeted at low-cost personal computers, manufactured by Intel from 1998 until 2023.

The first Celeron-branded CPU was introduced on April 15, 1998, and was based on the Pentium II, the second release of the P6 microarchitecture. Beginning in 2002, Celerons were popular by adding the SSE2 instruction set from the Pentium 4. From 2009 onward, Celeron processors have supported both 32-bit and 64-bit x86 software. They typically include smaller CPU caches and fewer features, resulting in lower performance compared to Intel’s mainstream brands Pentium or Core. While some Celeron designs have achieved strong performance for their segment, the majority of the Celeron line has exhibited noticeably degraded performance. Intel’s higher-end brands command premium prices in part because they offer larger caches and advanced features that Celeron processors lack.

In September 2022, Intel announced that the Celeron brand, along with Pentium, were to be replaced with the new "Intel Processor" branding for low-end processors in laptops from 2023 onwards. The rebranding encompassed both desktop and mobile Celeron lines, which Intel phased out in 2023. Then, Intel released the N100 CPU, an evolution of the mobile Celeron, in 2023. The Celeron had two cores, but the N100 has four cores. The maximum operating clock is 3.40GHz, the TDP is 6W. The maximum RAM capacity is 16GB.

As a product concept, the Celeron was introduced in response to Intel's loss of the low-end market, in particular to the Cyrix 6x86, the AMD K6, and the IDT Winchip. Intel's existing low-end product, the Pentium MMX, was no longer performance-competitive at 233 MHz. Although a faster Pentium MMX would have been a lower-risk strategy, the industry-standard Socket 7 platform hosted a market of competitor CPUs that could be drop-in replacements for the Pentium MMX. Instead, Intel pursued a budget part that was to be pin-compatible with their high-end Pentium II product, using the Pentium II's proprietary Slot 1 interface.

The Celeron also effectively killed off the nine-year-old i486 chip, which had been the low-end processor brand for entry-level desktops and laptops until 1998.

Intel hired marketing firm Lexicon Branding, which had originally come up with the name "Pentium", to devise a name for the new product as well. The San Jose Mercury News described Lexicon's reasoning behind the name they chose: "Celer is Latin for swift, as in the word 'accelerate', and 'on' as in 'turned on'. Celeron is seven letters and three syllables, like Pentium. The 'Cel' of Celeron rhymes with 'tel' of Intel."

Launched in April 1998, the first Covington Celeron was essentially a 266 MHz Pentium II manufactured without any secondary cache at all. Covington also shared the 80523 product code of Deschutes. Although clocked at 266 or 300 MHz (frequencies 33 or 66 MHz higher than the desktop version of the Pentium w/MMX), the cacheless Celerons had trouble outcompeting the parts they were designed to replace. Substantial numbers were sold on first release, largely on the strength of the Intel name, but the Celeron quickly achieved a poor reputation both in the trade press and among computer professionals. The initial market interest faded rapidly in the face of its poor performance, and with sales at a very low level, Intel felt obliged to develop a substantially faster replacement as soon as possible. Nevertheless, the first Celerons were quite popular among some overclockers, for their flexible overclockability and reasonable price. Covington was only manufactured in Slot 1 SEPP format.

The Mendocino Celeron, launched August 24, 1998, was the first retail CPU to use on-die L2 cache. Whereas Covington had no secondary cache at all, Mendocino included 128 KB of L2 cache running at full clock rate. The first Mendocino-core Celeron was clocked at a then-modest 300 MHz but offered almost twice the performance of the old cacheless Covington Celeron at the same clock rate. To distinguish it from the older Covington 300 MHz, Intel called the Mendocino core Celeron 300A. Although the other Mendocino Celerons (the 333 MHz part, for example) did not have an A appended, some people call all Mendocino processors Celeron-A regardless of clock rate.