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Where Oh Where Is The Pentium 4?
Othello writes: "Sharky managed to dig up some insider info on why we aren't going to see the Pentium 4 this month. There are chipset problems with ICH2 that are causing the delay. The processor should be out around week 48, they say, which is late November or early December."
HardOCP had a link on their page yesterday pointing to TurboTech and an pretty damaging, but generally truthful, editorial... If you are an Intel fan, well, skip this message :)
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http://www. tur botech.ch/articles2000/001001-intels_darkening-01
HardOCP quoted this part, which is a pretty good one:
September 2000 - Intel's blackest month in countless years. Following the official withdrawal of the 1.13 GHz PIII in the last days of August, in the wake of this face-loss it also became pretty obvious that Intel will have to ditch the grandiose plans of breathing new life into the dying P6 core with a 200 MHz FSB, a 0.13 micron process, and larger on-die L2 caches. It seems the Coppermine core (the last and most advanced modification of the half a decade old P6 core, introduced in the Pentium Pro 150 MHz in the mid-90s) simply won't be able to go much further.
My calendar has the year grouped into 12 units called "months". Each unit has between 28 and 31 days. The units have unique names that people can reference. As people become familiar with the names and order of the months, they can quickly determine what time of year is referenced when the name appears. Seems like a better scheme than the "week" calendar: "My birthday is on week 16, day 2 of 1964."
Seriously, all of the major recent Intel chipset problems were with RDRAM. There's the infamous i820E problem with the third RDRAM chip not getting registered (which was after the initial, pre-RDRAM i820 went bust). And now this, when the ICH2 is coupled with the i850 and i860 MTHs, which use... starts with R, you know this...... RDRAM! Right!
I think the time for the NVidia DDR chipset is NOW. Let's stop this half-assed hardware engineering and pre-alpha lithography which the Intel staff is undertaking.
It's not that simple. Both RDRAM and DDR require tighter tolerances on the chipset and motherboard levels for the same obvious reason--the more bandwidth you want to transfer, the less your tolerance for noise and defects, and the greater the danger of crosstalk. Period. This is simply a fact of life if you want the benefits of high-speed DRAM without taking the (in my opinion inevitable) step of ditching the current system of expandable commodity RAM on the motherboard in favor of a system which ties hardwired or embedded DRAM to the MPU.
Now, you can argue that RDRAM makes the problem worse by trying to cram the same amount of bandwidth as PC1600 DDR into a thinner bus. And you can argue that dealing with a new memory communications protocol has led to more bugs. I'm not going to argue with you there. On the other hand, RDRAM proponents would counter that RDRAM lessens these problems by switching to a packet-based protocol to cut down on interference.
And you can argue--as you did--that the fact that mighty Intel has run into myriad problems trying to implement RDRAM for their PC chipsets, and that their results to date--the i820 and i840--have been lackluster at best. But you can also point out that Intel has (for marketechture reasons) made this switch on a processor designed for use with SDRAM only. You can point out that they've (also foolishly) decided to have the switch coincide with a switch to hub-based memory management--which, incidentally, appears to be the source of the erratum in the i850, not the use of RDRAM. You might also want to note that Intel's first efforts with SDRAM chipsets, while not as starcrossed as the i820/i840, were nowhere near as efficient, stable or refined as their 4th-generation BX chipset or the 5th-gen i815.
Finally, it's worth noticing that there are exactly zero currently available DDR chipsets, bug-free or otherwise, with which to compare Intel's RDRAM record. Of course the main reason for this is politics--only after a year of Intel floundering with the RDRAM protocol did the industry finally coalesce behind DDR. And of course this fact will be changing quite soon, within the month in all likelihood. The fact that several working and apparently stable DDR chipsets are on the verge of being released, from chipset designers less accomplished than Intel, means that DDR cannot be as difficult to implement as RDRAM-backers have long argued it would be. Still--and this is very important--no one has claimed it was easy. Indeed, DDR chipsets were by all accounts much more difficult to get working than SDRAM chipsets, and even now many are reportedly quite finicky when working with DDR made by different manufacturers. Furthermore, all DDR motherboards due for release in the near future are, like all of Intel's RDRAM boards, six-layer. This improves stability and reduces crosstalk at the expense of extra engineering effort and manufacturing cost; SDRAM chipsets tend to be quite stable with just 4 layers.
I dunno where that leaves the ease-of-implementation balance. It appears that it's on the side of DDR, but it's still a bit premature to say so conclusively. In any case, the idea that whipping up a DDR chipset to replace RDRAM is child's play is absolutely false.
On the other hand, Intel already does have a DDR chipset for the P4--or rather, for Foster, the "P4 Xeon" due out in the beginning of the year. Now, this chipset could be modified for use with the normal P4 with little problem, but there are two big reasons it won't be:
1) Cost: In order to fill Foster's massive FSB, Intel's new chipset uses, IIRC, dual-channel double-wide DDR. Contrary to what you may have heard, this means a much much higher cost than the dual-channel RDRAM bus on the i850. The reason is that RDRAM's one unambiguous advantage over DDR is in using fewer pins; having two channels and doubling the bus width means multiplying the already quite large number of DDR pins by 4, which in turns means motherboards which are mucho expensive, even if two sticks of DDR is cheaper than two sticks of RDRAM.
2) Legal obligations. Intel is under contract with Rambus not to promote any other next-gen DRAM standard for its mainstream desktop line until 2003. That means that, unless they want their asses sued off (and we all know if there's one thing Rambus is good at, it's ass-sue-offing), the best Intel can do for the next couple years is license the P4 bus and allow 3rd-party chipset makers like VIA, ALi and, as you mentioned, perhaps even nvidia make DDR chipsets for the P4. Actually the contract specifically states only that Rambus has the option to revoke Intel's RDRAM license if they promote a DDR chipset for their desktop chips, so the big question is, would Intel risk losing their Rambus license, especially when there is no cheap DDR solution which can take full advantage of the P4's 3.2GB/s FSB? On the other hand, would Rambus risk revoking Intel's RDRAM license and thus taking themselves out of the PC DRAM industry possibly for good??
I dunno. Frankly I'm just hoping Infineon succeeds in overturning some of Rambus' RDRAM patents with prior art as they're seeking to do. (I'd be shocked if they didn't succeed in showing prior art for Rambus' "patents" on SDRAM and DDR.)
AMD's not going to get a lot of Intel's business until they get some more workstation-class OEMs producing machines with the Athlons in them. I'm picking out 30 new machines today at work, and I'm not looking at any Athlons. Why? Dell doesn't make any Athlon machines. Gateway doesn't have any business machines, only their home-market Select series. Micron? Nope...
I'll buy them, I'm happy with my Duron 600 at home, and if they're cheaper, it's a no brainer. But AMD is going to have to break Intel's stranglehold on the business OEM before I can buy them!
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When in danger or in doubt, run in circles, scream and shout. --Robert A. Heinlein
Oh yes, Athlon DOES support (Alpha-style) SMP, there just are no any SMP chipsets developed for it yet.
Only if you play the '+/- six months' game. The 486 was delayed that long by to a problem with their fab yield.
The 80286 was on time.
.sig: Now legally binding!
About an hour ago, the press release cleared that AMD demonstrated a dual Athlon workstation at Microprocessor Forum. Everyone knows they've been planning it, but now it's official.
Of course, it doesn't matter much until you can buy one in stores. Volume SMP-capable MB's should be available Q1 2001 -- not that far away.
And, the Athlon's chipsets have been SMP-capable for a while (they *are* based on DEC Alpha's interconnect), it's just that no one has put the denergy behind it to build SMP motherboards from them until now.
Happy day!
--Lenny
It certainly appears that AMD is poised to overtake Intel in the PC arena. IMHO, Intel is coasting on their reputation, fab capacity, and product line breadth, at the moment. They are not the CPU performance or value leaders. The introduction of Mustang and Athlon SMP around the end of this year will chip at Intel's last stronghold.
But will it matter?
We speak of the post-PC era. I don't expect to see the PC go away. I'd rather expect it to look more like the end of the mainframe era of a decade or two ago. The mainframes didn't go away, they even kept growing their market. But the wild growth was in the PCs.
Now in the post-PC era, expect to see the PC market growing, just not wildly. Knowing exactly what will be the wild growth area is what will make some people VERY rich.
But Intel's product breadth, particularly ownership of the StrongARM, is going to help them more than AMD's CPU leadership will. IMHO, AMD may well have won a Pyhrric (sp?) victory. The big question will be how they are poised to play in the post-PC era.
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
The reason 2038 is a problem for Unix machines is that Unix time turns into a 9999...(I forget how many 9's) which in most systems in how you denote the end of a file. So imagine having an internal system date which corresponds to the EOF marker, you have a large problem on your hands. Remember Unix time has been counting since 1969.
I'm a loner Dottie, a Rebel.
There is also a story at the Register about the current exec shuffle that Intel is doing related to the P4. Sounds more and more like panic to me given its recent set of fiascos...
Oh where, oh where is the Pentium 4?
Oh where, oh where has it been? This song will turn me to a Karma Whore And AC's will rip out my spleen!"Ancillary does not mean you get to rule the world." --U.S. Circuit Judge Harry Edwards, speaking to the FCC's lawyer
The only thing that will save the P4 at this point is a huge marketing blitz by Intel. And even that sometimes fizzles (remember the "Enhanced for Pentium 3" web sites? The only one around I've seen is intel.com).
Now, if only Motorola/Apple finally get off their asses and make the high-clock speed G4s it's capable of. Dual CPU is tre-cool, but only if the OS fully supports it, and OSX won't be out in full release for a while.
No boom today. Boom tomorrow. There's always a boom tomorrow. - Cmdr. Susan Ivanova
harnessing the complexity of it all.
What would Gordon Moore, Robert Noyce, Ted Hoff and Federico Fagin do?
try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
According to the Register article at http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/1/12491.html, it is delayed for many reasons -- not the least of which is that motherboard firms are delaying shipments of products to support Good Ol' Wilma.
Also, not many people are REALLY happy about the fact that these new processers are going to have to be cooled by fans that are hard to implement -- 25 dollars for said fan.
My, that looked a whole lot better when I hit "Preview". Somewhere between the preview and the submit I seem to have lot a few words (not to mention a tag). Hungry gremlins?
How can anyone here say what the "average" user needs inside their computer? Saying no one needs a 500mhz or higher speed processor is asanine, if average users don't need it how come power users need it? Blender will render a 3D scene on a 300mhz P2, why do you need anything faster? Intel is in the business of making money, yes thats right, they sell a product, not try to survive on ad revenues or VC. There would be little to no point in producing chips if they couldn't produce them in bulk. For every chip produced thats a little cheaper each cheap is. You might have room to complain if they increased the clock speed by 1 or 2 mhz per chip version instead of 50. Last year I bought a P3 500 for almost 300 dollars now the same chip can be found for under 200. With each stepping of a processor released all the older versions get that much cheaper. I don't give a shit about the newest processor. I am interested in the one thats fast enough for my needs.
I'm a loner Dottie, a Rebel.
What if I want my uberG4 for doing _work_ rather than spinning tiny wheels really fast? It's as if you don't understand how different PPC chips are and have been, from x86. They have always been register-rich and loaded with cache compared with x86- let's have more of that. Let's have an uberG4 in which the cache will fit, say, Quake III :) then the pentium people can boast of their higher clocks all they want while their computers spin their tiny wheels constantly loading stuff into their teeny 'high speed zones', and the uberG4 will be about TORQUE and will slowly overtake the pentiums for good.
(Yes, I know that quake framerates are hard to come by on MacOS- one word, ATI- no, two words, ATI and Doom: Quake III is not inherently a super complicated program. The reissue of Doom looks to be a _lot_ more demanding. The difference could well favor the G4- having a compiler use loads of huge registers to speed things is dead simple compared to the twisted arcanity that will be necessary for P4 and beyond)
The Pentium vs. Athlon battles of recent months have made a couple of things apparent.
The first is that no one cares, except for the same kind of person who insists on owning cars with 500+ horsepower. I currently do high end software development, including lots of 3D graphics work, on two machines. One of them is a 333 MHz Pentium II, the other is a 400 MHz Pentium II. This is hardcore stuff, involving several compilers and some high-end languages that don't normally get used. According to benchmarks, my machines are about 29-35% of the speed of the top of the line machines. And in all honestly I have zero complaints about speed. Both of my computers are zippy. I suppose I could try to slow them down by pointlessly including extra headers everywhere, but why? "My computer is twice as fast at handling unnecessary crap as your computer" is not impressive.
The second thing is that it's obvious that the x86 architecture is a losing battle. When Apple claimed that the PowerPC processors were equivalent to Pentiums of double the clock speed, everyone pooh-poohed them. Then, according to real benchmarks like the one mentioned on Slashdot yesterday (in a story about the Pentium III), it turns out that a 500 MHz G4 really is equivalent to a 1 GHz Athlon, and only 12% slower than a 1.1 GHz Pentium III. And the G4 uses much less power, making it a realistic choice for notebooks. I am not saying that Macs are better than PCs. I am saying that the current high-end PowerPC chips are making the Intel vs. AMD battle look pretty ridiculous. Who cares if Chevy puts an 800 HP engine in one car and then Pontiac out does them with 810 HP? Everyone is happy with inexpensive and reliable with 150 HP cars that don't need to be handled with kid gloves.
I think the time for the NVidia DDR chipset is NOW. Let's stop this half-assed hardware engineering and pre-alpha lithography which the Intel staff is undertaking.
"Ancillary does not mean you get to rule the world." --U.S. Circuit Judge Harry Edwards, speaking to the FCC's lawyer
This is not news. It's perfectly normal. If I remember correctly, the last chip Intel released when they *said* they would was the 486.
-atrowe: Card-carrying Mensa member. I have no toleranse for stupidity.
They rhyme if you use a "My Fair Lady"-ish, proper English accent. Try it. (no, not out loud!)
"Ancillary does not mean you get to rule the world." --U.S. Circuit Judge Harry Edwards, speaking to the FCC's lawyer
...you fire them.
BlackNova Traders
I see the delay to production of the Pentium 4 as a non-harmful event. Those of you out there who have to have the biggest and fastest, ok --Pentium 4 may be just what you need. Just like a balding 40-year-old going through a mid-life crisis needs a red convertable Jaguar.
But really, at this point the tech market is lagging, software has fallen far far behind top-of-the line processors, and we (as consumers, mind you) don't need more power except to fulfill some non-productive urge. And there is no doubt that the P-4 is targeted at base-level consumers and not folks rendering high-end graphics and animations.
Oh, and I'll put money on the P-4 being less stable than previous generation processors.
It seems everything that Intel is doing lately is FAILING miserably. The high-profile problems keep cropping up (i.e. the 820 chipset, the 1.13 ghz PIII, etc.) They are full of promises about faster hardware, but they don't seem to deliver very well. AMD is getting great yields and gaining market share, I think Intel is running scared and are releasing things (either chips or press releases talking about chips) way faster than they should. As soon as the business market figures out AMD is making good products and that AMD chips are not the second-rate, unstable things that they used to be I think they will take a larger cut of Intel's market share than they are now. We all should be overjoyed at this newfound competieion in the processor market, it has brought prices down and speeds up more quickly than would of happened if Intel still was the dominant it used to be. However, it means that errata that used to be fixed before release are shipping with chips because they want the chips on the market faster. Their attitude is usually "oh, we'll fix that in the next stepping". I am glad they are delaying the release so they can fix the problem, rather than just releasing the chip as-is, as they have done in the past.
.sigless
Enigma
Enigma
Enigma
My friends and I are already doing this. Bascially you get a calender and people try and guess which week the Pentium 4 might come out on. $1 per week you guess. Whoever guesses the right week gets the money from the pool. In case of Intel never releasing the damned thing, you go and buy pizza or something for everyone. And if a couple people get the same week, you can split it, etc...
This thing has already been delayed, I personally have the weeks of January as my main choices.
"Imagination is the only weapon in the war against reality." -Jules de Gautier
Do we really need the next generation of Intel's overpriced processor/heat plate or is this merely an attempt by Intel for Yet Another Incremental Upgrade(YAIU).
Now that I have your attention, and before you call me flaimbait, hear me out.
The only truely revolutionary changes that Intel has ever done is the 386 and the Pentium. Every other design that they did was a simple upgrade to already existing chips.
Call me crazy, but I think that Intel should have released a 64 bit chip about 5 years ago. Now that would have been as revolutionary as going from the 286 to the 386, or from the 486 to the Pentium.
Why didn't they? Because they had already paid a fortune developing the existing technology and they wanted to milk it for another few years. Intel is a big believer in the incremental upgrade. They want users to pay a premium for basically the same chip three or four times while spending the money that should be going to research into the "Intel Inside" marketing campaign.
By this time Intel should have been releasing chips with 128 bit busses. Instead we are stuck with a chip whose basic design hasn't changed in many years. And the 64 bit chip is delayed yet again. Is it really going to be out at the end of next year. Sadly not.
*sighs*
I guess I just don't understand how to make money.
-- Never make a general statement.