Willamette and Other IDF Highlights

Hoodoo Extreme writes, "There's a new issue out of the Private Eye which takes an interesting look at Willamette from IDF as well as some new info on RAMBUS. Later on in the piece there are some new findings on various 3D chips such as the S3 GX4-C which will follow the Savage 2000. Has anyone heard about this one? " IDF == Intel Developers Forum.

Comments

Willamette if done correctly....

[fusion94]

might pass the athlon. But then again maybe not. I think that AMD has been listening to people and giving them what they want while Intel has been riding their laurels for the past couple years. Intel had better be afraid.

Willamette Using Aluminum interconnects?

[the_burton]

I thought the big push from Intel was to switch to copper interconnects. Isn't copper supposed to increase speed at lower power? Or am I just talking out of my ass? Oh well, it is pretty late. Also, I'm glad to see that the Willamette is using a 400 MHz bus (Or a quad pumped data bus running at 100 MHz for the nit pickers)... wow.. that's pretty damn fast. Seem's like quite a jump from the PIII 133MHz. All in all, seems like another new crop of goodies that I won't be able to afford for a year or two... boohoo.

Re:Willamette Using Aluminum interconnects?

[drw]

Copper interconnects reduce power consumption and allow higher frequencies. Intel is probably wanting to hold off on using copper for the initial production run while they work out any other issues with the chip, especially since the Willy pushes into some new territory technology-wise (whether for better or worse). With their recent track record of "errata", I am sure they will want to keep any potential problem sources to a minimum as long as they can keep performance competitive.

As for the bus, 400MHz sounds pretty impressive, but until memory technology catches up, that extra bandwidth will remain wasted (at least on single processor systems).

Crankey Musings on A Boring Read

[Yardley]

I'm reading it and I got to say that it sounds like a bunch of marketing hype for Intel (well it is their show). I hear nine MPEG-1 movies and think 'wow', but there's no explanation of how much to attribute to Willamette and how much to attribute to the video card (and the T&L problems). Try some MPEG-4 movies to impress and let us know what the chip's doing (real numbers).

So looks like Will'll be out in Q3 of 2000 and probably called Pentium IV. And then there's Rambus:

Not only was RAMBUS a 'Gold Sponsor' (that means they're in bed with Intel) at this year's IDF but did anyone notice their stock soar earlier this week (up over 50%!)? We met with RAMBUS' Steven Woo, who explained the sharp rise in stock being due to Intel's announcements that the Willamette, Tehama and Timna platforms will only run with RDRAM.

Do we really want to pay 3x the price for RAM?

Fortunately, there's AMD, who was "showing off a very impressive 1.1Ghz Athlon with the new "Thunderbird" core (on-die L2 cache)."

Talk about power of 10! I think I'll be going with AMD from now on. //end rant [tired,sleep]

Re:Slow BUS speed.

[billybob jr]

The Memory bandwidth you are quoting is for the graphics subsystem. Not the main memory. Main memory has a bandwidth of 3.2 GB per second, just like the Willamette.

The 48 gigabytes of bandwidth does sound impressive but it is listed as "DRAM bus bandwidth" for the graphics. It isn't clear (on the list of specs) if this is part of the 32 megs of rdram or dedicated graphics memory.

From 3dfx's website the Voodoo3, the Voodoo3 3500 has a peak bandwidth of just under 3 GB per second.

Intel Scrambling?

[Greyfox]

It seems to me that Intel pulled all this stuff out of their corporate ass overnight. Up until just recently all we were hearing was Itanium, Itanium, Itanium. Nevermind that they're joining the ranks of 64 bit processing about a decade after everyone else (That's OK -- DEC released a 16 bit processor in 1970.)

Anyway, someone must have looked up and realized that AMD was coming from one side and Transmeta from another and the two of them were getting ready to divvy up Intel's entire market between them. And while they're out there showing blue sky, here in the real world AMD is still leading them in terms of processor and memory speed.

Isn't competition wonderful?

Re:Intel Scrambling?

[David Greene]

It takes years to design a processor. Rest assured that Intel has been working on Willamette, Coppermine, etc. for a long, long time. The x86 isn't dead yet. Intel has tried to kill it plenty of times before.

--

Re:Intel Scrambling?

[VAXman]

You must be REALLY new to the computer industry. Willamette has been in design since late 1995, well over four years ago, and all new flagship processors take approximately that long to produce. It was not just thought up in response to AMD or whatever, as all of the clueless journalists will have you believe. Intel does a pretty good job of keeping things secret (no info on Willamette until last week, while AMD was hyping Athlon at least a year before first silicon).

Re:VA / Slash-dot Giveaway! NOT

[Kit Cosper]

Once again there is someone trolling around with nothing better to do than stir up trouble.

There isn't a Slashdot Giveaway

Things like this would be posted on the VA website, not on Slashdot.

My apologies to anyone who has been misled by this poster.

--Kit

Re:Iritanium...

[Detritus]

Intel is already handing out prototype Merced chips to selected developers and vendors. Even if it does not meet Intel's performance expectations, I expect that Intel will release it and market it for high-end servers that need a 64-bit CPU.

Re:Will - am - ette? Wtf?

[Mr. Piccolo]

It's SPELLED Wilamette, but it's pronounced "MUD"!