Intel's programme to upgrade the cores of its 90nm 'Prescott'-derived processors will continue with the Socket 478 Celeron line-up, it has emerged.

The chip giant will ship low-end chips based on the E-0 90nm core on 20 December, according to reports available in The Register website.

As with other D-0 to E-0 upgrades - most recently of the Pentium 4 and Celeron chips based on the 775-pin Socket T infrastructure - the new Socket 478 Celerons will be pin-compatible with their predecessors and gain "power optimisations to enable speed enhancements", according to Intel's documentation.

Interestingly, while the E-0 upgrade has brought support for Windows XP Service Pack 2's 'no execute' anti-virus feature to the 775-pin P4s and Celerons, this does not appear to be a facility Intel is going to tout with the updated 478-pin Celerons. Neither does is appear to be doing so with the E-0 Mobile P4, which was scheduled to have shipped on 1 October.

The E-0 478-pin Celerons, clocked at up to 2.93GHz, should arrive after Intel has begun shipping E-0 Xeons, currently scheduled to take place on 29 October.