Graphical applications should see a big performance boost when Intel introduces a faster chip for high-end servers and workstations on March 17. But the company has delayed until midyear a technology that would standardize eight-way servers.

The Pentium III Xeon chip will run at 550 MHz, up from the current Xeon's 450 MHz, and will be available with cache sizes of 512 Kbytes to 2 Mbytes. The chip will incorporate Intel's new set of multimedia instructions, which stand to greatly enhance workstation applications. Kinetix, a division of Autodesk Inc., for example, will demonstrate a 30% leap in rendering speed on its animation authoring software for film and video, says Jimmy Giliberti, senior director of product development at Kinetix. Many applications, particularly those residing on servers, will see more modest improvements.

Intel's eight-way server technology, originally slated to debut late last year, has been delayed a second time. Industry sources say the development is more complex than Intel anticipated.