Double-Whammy Look At The Pentium 4

SystemLogicNet writes: "We at SystemLogic.net have just taken a technical look at the Pentium 4 architecture. In the article we go over all the basics that all the other sites cover like the double pumped ALUs, iSSE2, the longer pipeline, etc, but in addition we have some discussion about how different program structurings have an impact upon the design, and performance of the Pentium 4. One of the major areas where this comes into play is how complex data structures interact with the underlying philosophy that the Pentium 4 is built upon -- extreme bandwidth. This Pentium 4 technical background can be read over here. At the same time, we've done a rigorous analysis, including benchmark description and discussion regarding the Pentium 4's performance, and this can be read over this way."

Comments

Re:Sad state of affairs

[Diomedes01]

Most of you probably think 90% is good, but think of it this way: 1 out of every 10 times you try and click on something, or double click something, or open a file, whatever, it fails. Every 10th Word file fails.

Yet again, another Slashbot posts on a topic about which he appears to have no knowledge whatsoever. This analogy is by far one of the worst I have ever seen. Do you even know what branch prediction is? Yes, 90% may not be great, but it's certainly not the huge problem that you make it out to be. There are many other architectural factors that come into play here.

Personally, I don't agree with the Brute Force methodology by Intel; I prefer simpler, cleaner and more elegant solutions. It is difficult to deny, however, that the brute force method has worked so far. Yes, yes, I know that the "x86 suxx0rs" crowd is now going to come out of the woodwork. Let me just say this: It may not be the best architecture, and it may be kludged for backwards compatability, but... it works, and it's cheap. With any luck, the 64-bit processors will be able to buck the trend of backwards compatability (has anyone heard anything about this with regards to Itanium and/or AMD's 64-bit chip?).

amd 1.4 ghz is available and kicks butt

[lupine]

The 1.4 ghz athlon has been out for a couple months now... the 1.1 ghz athlon has been out for at least 10 months.

Here is a june 6 pcworld review where an amd 1.4-GHz system is "the fastest system yet tested by PCWorld.com" beating out 5 systems based on the 1.7 ghz p4.

Here is a tech report review of an amd 1.33 vs intel 1.7 where they conclude: "Intel's new entry, the 1.7GHz Pentium 4, performs about like a 1.2GHz Athlon in most situations."

You cant get duel processing power from a pentium 4 like you can with an athlon.

Re:Misleading graphs

[SystemLogicNet]

The graphs were a mistake that was made in Excel...I have fixed them and uploaded them where they start at 0 (I'm the writer of the review). You can see an explanation here:

http://www.systemlogic.net/boards/showthread.php?t hreadid=1404