The Pentium III is a microprocessor developed by Intel and was released in 1999. It was part of the Pentium family and was designed for personal computers, offering improved performance over its predecessor, the Pentium II. The Pentium III introduced features like the SSE instruction set, which enhanced multimedia processing capabilities. This processor was available in various clock speeds, ranging from 450 MHz to 1.4 GHz. It was widely used in desktops and laptops during the early 2000s, making it a popular choice for both home and business computing. The Pentium III eventually paved the way for more advanced processors in the Pentium series.