Its supposedly capable of speeds around 10ghz using the .13 and .1 micron processes. I haven't heard anything about furture AMD architectures being able to go that high. Jason, your a silly person. Back in the day when AMD was dreaming of becoming a real chip company, Intel released the first Pentium. Its performance barely matched that of a 486.
Architectures take time to mature.
As for not producing .13 micron p4's from the start, the answer is simple. The hardware to make .13 micron chips was still being tested. I also think that the .18 P4 was just a ploy to by Intel some time. Here's my take on the situation. P4 is overpriced.