The formation and development of adiabatic shear localization in serrated chips have great significance to study of mechanism of high speed cutting. This paper investigates the theory prediction and experimental verification of the critical cutting speed of adiabatic shear localization, distribution of adiabatic shear band in serrated chip and the geometry of adiabatic shear band during high speed cutting of hardened steel. The results indicated that the theoretical prediction of critical cutting speed is consistent with the experimental results.With the increase of cutting speed, the width and spacing of adiabatic shear bands in the serrated chips decrease linearly. There are two types of adiabatic shear bands during the formation and development of adiabatic shear localization, i.e. the deformation shear band and the transformed shear band.