» Computer CPU's «
News and notes 2004
More up to date news can be found on my News pages
Oct 2004
There's an interesting article in the trade press this month (Computer Trade Only) by Mark Pickavance on the heat issues with Intel P4, something that is playing on my mind a lot too.
There is a formula given, but the figures below are more interesting. The first figure is the chip speed or to be exact the processor core frequency(in Ghz), the second figure is the processor thermal design power in Watts/cm2, effectively how hot it gets.
- 1.40 : 55.3
- 2 : 75.3
- 2.40A : 89
- 2.40B : 59.8
- 2.40C : 66.2
- 2.50 : 61
- 2.60 : 62.6
- 2.80C : 69.7
- 3 : 81.9
- 3.20 : 82
- 3.40E : 103
- [ Multi core Prescott
reputedly as high as 200W
CTO, issue 21 volume 9 October 2004 ]
The Intel graph shown (in the magazine) scales to running as hot as a nuclear reactor (200 Watts), rising to a rocket nozzle (400 Watts) and spiralling out of control into the suns surface at 1,000 Watts. Needless to say something needs to be done long before then and they are working on it.
Jan 2004
Intel Prescott 2.8Ghz LGA 775
Can't read a word of Chinese myself, but a picture tells a thousand words, as they say.
So, go to HKEPC and feast your eyes on some pre-production closes of the new socket setup, and may even a Tejas processor.
News and notes 2003
December 2003
Ooops. Been a while, eh. I've probably put it all on the news pages, though I've wads of notes to type up too.
So. What's been happening ? I stood but a raft of stuff in about AMD's Opterons and Althlon 64's but I'm more an Intel person. This is not so much a reporting bias as the fact I'm already stretching myself too thin as it is.
Intel wise we've had the grossly expensive P4EE with it's extra cache and more news of the upcoimng Prescott. Me? I'm hanging on for the Tejas chip, even if it is rumoured to be 50% hotter the the current 3Ghz P4's. Unless it's too noisy, it which cases I'll drive this system into the ground!
Hopefully I'll revisit this page after christmas and give it a huge makeover, but at the minute I've got a bee in my bonnet about Spam...
June 2003
Tom's Hardware: Benchmark Marathon: 65 CPUs from 100 MHz to 3066 MHz
CPU Performance Check: AMD & Intel 1994 to 2003
Other than a vague indication, I don't trust benchmarks but crossing a decade? Worth a read for sure
April 2003
I really should update this page more often! I'll dig up all the files sometime and copy them over.
THE place to look though is Chip Architect. That and all the other tech news site I haunt 
So, what to say to flesh out this sadly bare page?
Well the P4C is more or less out though I won't get mine until mid May. I should go into rapture over the 800Mhz and such forth, and I will, but for a second, I'll drop a few names and links to tide us over to 2007, give or take.
The Pentium tags and dates are a vague guide, take them with a pinch of salt.
So, what keywords will be have for the future? (I'll try to fill in all the gaps in a few days)
News and notes 2002
The following table is hoisted from The Inquirer: Dec 11th 2002
This table shows Pentium 4s which have hyperthreading enabled and also include the 800MHz system bus Intel will adopt in the second quarter of next year (Q2 2003).
:
- $ 800 for the 2.4Ghz (2.6+ by year end)
- $1000 for the 2.6Ghz (2.8+ by year end)
- $1300 for the 2.8 and 3.0Ghz (3.2+ by year end)
- $1500 for the 3.2Ghz (3.4+ and 90nm by year end)
Currently, the top of the range Pentium 4 at 3.20GHz, and which supports 800MHz system buses and hyperthreading is set to cost $637/1000 at launch time.
Needless to say the 400Mhz chips will become obsolete early next year. For the future, look for information of the Tejas (1.2 GHz - 1.33 GHz FSB)
Conclusion* ~ Midsummer 2002
The New Pentium 4 Has A Slight Lead over Athlon XP despite the 533 MHz difference! It used to be comparing AMD and Intel chips were like comparing apples to oranges, the difference is huge. Here, the difference is much less obvious and Intel instead of AMD is on the top. Technically both AMD and Intel have advantages over one another, the Palomino core of the AMD Athlon XP can to process more commands at the same time, while Intel's Pentium 4 has a much higher clock speed.
The most visible differences between the two are that Intel is better suited for the future. AMD has already used the 0.18 micron process to its fullest and the only thing for them to do is to go to 0.13 micron. However, Intel has already implemented this technology and has a head start. In addition, Intel has increased the L2-Cache from 256 KB (Willamette core) to 512 KB (Northwood core) and the real performance is seen in the way it handles data from memory to CPU. My recommendation are to wait for Intel’s new 133 MHz FSB CPUs coming out later this year and also see if AMD will come up with a 166 MHz FSB to accommodate the already popular KT333 chipset. With so many new innovations coming out, it is hard to choose. I say wait before you upgrade and see what new goodies these two chip giants come up with.
*Conclusion is an extract from a Neoseeker article.
Chip-architect: (April 16, 2002): Intel's Prescott Prospects
Future Intel Desktop Processors
November 2000: Pentium 4
Codenames Northwood, Prestonia and Gallatin.
Northwood is your basic P4, the P4c being the upcoming 800Mhz version. I believe Prestonia was given to the is the dual-processor Xeon's and Gallatin to the multi-processor Xeon's.
Core:
- 0.18µ and 1.5Ghz
- L1 Data Cache is 8kB
- L2 cache is 512kb
2003 to 2004: Pentium 5
Codenames Prescott, Nocona and Potomac.
Basically, it's a P4 pumped full of steroids.
Prescott is a Q4 release though I reckon Intel will release it in September to steal some thunder from AMD's 64bit "San Diago" Athlon's.
The dual-processor Nocona has been put in the same (Q4-03) timeframe, with the 64 bit multi-processor Potomac set back to around June 2004.
Check out the schematics of the Prescott die
Core:
- 0.09µ (90nm) and 3.4Ghz (?)
- L1 Data Cache is doubled to 16kB
- L1 is quadrupled to 32Kb for the DP/MP chips)
- L2 cache is doubled to 1024kb
- 13 new instructions
- Two instead of one 32 bit integer execution cores.
June (?) 2004: Pentium 6
Codenames Yamhill, Jayhawk and Potomac (again).
All speculation until I can be bothered to dig a lot deeper but as far as I can tell Yamhill is essentialy a P4 Prescott with the embedded 64 bit instructions turned on and a 64 bit Data Width.
The level one cache will still 32kB and use 64 bit word/cycle
Jayhawk is the dual processor version, Potomac the multi-processor.
Still is more educated guesswork than anything else but I believe the associated motherboard chipsets (Copper River, Tumwater, Lindenhorst and Twin Castle) will support SATA II and DDR-II memory. Early days yet, but everything I've heard and read points to this.
"Intel's Yamhill - Itanic on ice?"
Chip Architect - read the article on "The clues for Yamhill"
- 0.09µ (90nm) and 4.0Ghz (?)
End 2004: Pentium 7
Codename: Tejas
I can't believe I've lost the notes!!! *Mutter*.
Addenda 2004:
Despite being ready, this was mothballed for marketing reasons!
The design team have been moved to fast track a dual core, 64 bit enhanced 'AMD beater' replacement for release in 2005)
- 0.09µ? and 5Ghz+ ?
Circa 2007: Pentium 8
Codenamed Nehalem.
Only heard the vaguest things banded about. Give me a month or so!
Addenda 2004: Or longer, *cough*
- 0.065µ? (65nm) and 7Ghz - 10Ghz
Intel Server / Workstation Processors
May 2001: Itanium®
Codenamed Merced.
- 180µ and 733Mhz
- 25 million transistors
- 2 MB and 4 MB L3 Cache
July 2002: Itanium® 2
Codenamed Madison.
Apparently there will be an enhanced Itanium 2 next year (2004) using 0.13µ technology, but with a massive 9MB of cache. Faster too, but that's hardly a surprise. I'm guessing up to 1.5Ghz.
- 0.18µ and 900Mhz
- 220 million transistors
- 3 Mb and 1.5 Mb L3 Cache
- 130 watt per processor.
(About the same as Nvidia's NV40. Hmm...)
16 way board to go, please!
Would Sir like fire insurance with that?
2005: Itanium 2b ?
Codename Montecito
Sources include this article at
The Register: Intel rewrites Itanium roadmap
- 0.09µ (90nm) and 1.8Ghz
- 300 million transisters?
- 6MB of Level 3 cache
- Dual core
2006: Itanium 3
Codenamed Tanglewood.
Even more cores per die and low power characteristics.
Apparently Tanglewood resembles the dual core [ UltraSPARC IV ] due out from Sun this year or IBM's [ Power5 chip ]coming in 2004.
The gist I'm getting is that one Tanglewood is like 4 Itanium's on a single chip, but without the manic power consumption. I'll dig a little deeper and see what I can find.
Sources include:
The Register - Tanglewood: the next Itanium revealed
- 0.065µ? (65nm) and 2.4Ghz. ?
AMD
When I get a minute (and remember) I'll prepare a table for AMD too, though they don't plan quite as far ahead as Intel.
Actually, thinking about it, I reckon I'll prepare tables for soundcards, HD's, networking etc too. You never know, my kids might to need cover IT history when they reach high school...
Links
- AMD
- AMD Zone - For all things AMD. Good place to look first
- Chip Architect for microprocessor chip analysis
- Chip Jihad
- Cyrix - VIA - SGS Thompson - Transmeta - ...
- Intel®:
- Intel's Product page
- Developer Solutions
- Intel Component Technical Documents
- Essential: [ http://www.intel.com/intel/intelis/museum/exhibit/hist_micro/hof/hof_main.htm" ] Intel's Hall of Fame
- [ http://www.intel.com/intel/intelis/museum/exhibit/hist_micro/hof/tspecs.htm" ] Intel chip comparisons (To Pentium II's)
- Quick reference chip guide
- Intel's Product page
- X86-Secret (Parlez vous Francais?)
Intel® Pentium® III Processor
The following article is copied from and copyright of Intel
The Intel® Pentium® III processor will be Intel's highest performance processor for the desktop. Its expanded instruction set offers superb performance for emerging usage models such as 3D graphics and speech, as well as boosting network TCP/IP performance and other applications.
The Pentium III processor offers a robust, new instruction set and architecture enhancements which include:
These architecture and instruction improvements enable these rich media/data types:
- frequencies of 500MHz and 450MHz
- integrated PBSRAM L2 cache (512K)
- 100MHz system bus
- 70 new instructions, including Streaming SIMD (Single Instruction
- Multiple Data) Extensions for enhanced application performance
- memory streaming architecture
- concurrent SIMD-FP architecture
- new media instructions
Source: developer.intel.com/design/pentiumiii
- real-time MPEG2 encode/decode
- 3D graphics
- AC3 audio, speech
- complex imaging effects
- realistic physics
- single processor configurations for desktop and dual-processor configurations for workstations and servers
