The world's leading computer chipmaker Intel has jumped off the chip speed roller coaster by yanking its four giga hertz (4 GHz) Pentium 4 processor off the drawing board.

The maximum clock speed of the core central processing chip of 'Intel inside' desktops will continue to be 3.8 GHz for a long time to come, letting down speed buffs awaiting chips of 4 GHz.

Media reports have said Intel officials told a recent developers' conference that the company would divert its attention to chips that work more efficiently, if not faster.

Intel has for years been involved in a clock speed race with its archrival Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) whose Athlon FX series chips have been giving it a run for its money.

Analysts note this as a marked deviation from Intel's promise in November 2003 to its financial analysts to launch its much-vaunted 4-GHz chip.

The California, US-based company that has some 180,000 system integrators working worldwide now plans to increase the performance of its chips by adding cache memory and including new features.

This is financially wise, say analysts, because it could reduce the impact of the current chip capacity glut in the market.

Intel would be following the runner up in clock speed contest with AMD by shifting its focus to the amount of work its chips could do per clock cycle - an aspect that AMD had begun concentrating on as early as 2001.

The questionable energy efficiency of chips of 3 GHz or faster had made Intel wary of pushing for higher clock speeds, they said.

The chip-making giant's efforts would now be on adding more cache memory that is reckoned the easiest way to improve performance.

Cache memory stores frequently accessed data where it can be retrieved more quickly than what is stored in the main memory.