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Intel Demos 4.7-GHz Pentium
richmlpdx writes "Silicon Strategies has an article about Intel's latest demo...
"Providing a sneak preview of its future developments, Intel Corp. here today demonstrated its fastest microprocessors to date--a 4.7-GHz chip for high-end desktop PCs.""
No doubt they chose 4.7GHz because their first "x86" processor ran at 4.7MHz.
How long will this hunt for more GHz continue? I'd say that if the major industry companies (Intel, AMD...) would make a since long needed move to a better architecture we could achieve more performance with less means.
What do I have against high frequencies? For starters, high speed, fully syncronized digital constructions rely on switching millions of transistors at the same time (each clock cycle), this burns lots of power which is a limiting factor today.
Also, high frequency does not imply high performance, the CPU still needs to do something each stage, for example older Pentiums (P3, if I remember right) had a 20 (yes twenty) stage pipeline. This yeilds huge penalties for miss predictions for branches etc.
This GHz hunting also leads to other problems, such as huge electromagnetic disturbances in the chip, and in busses, etc. The solution to this is to add more wires and pull them in different directions to compensate. This only wastes more power and emits even more heat.
What I suggest, now when we have lots of transistors to play with, are asyncronous designs! Yes they are harder to design and verify, but that is largely because the lack of supporting tools.
This would reduce the power needs, let the designers make longer critical paths in their constructions (just clock that part slower), and reduce the need for registers used to balance pipe-lines etc.
Another move could be to introduce simpler, but parallell CPUs, perhaps on the same piece of silicon. The software systems of today are multi-threaded already, so why not make the hardware capable of _true_ multi tasking...
My first pc was a 8088 at 4,77 MHz, somewhere in 1985. This new CPU does 4,7 GHz which is 4700 MHz, which is 1000 times as fast as what I've started with. Impressive. If back then someone would have told me that one day we would be using a 4700 MHz CPU I would probably burst out in laughter :)
For the most part, for most apps, SIMD is irrelevant. Yeah, maybe you can use it for data copying or a few other general things, but for the most part SIMD only helps with specific types of data processing until SIMD is further developed and SIMD-savvy compilers are common.
I do think MIPS can be compared due to the similarity in instruction sets.
The 8088 ran at about .3 MIPS (howstuffworks.com) and Sandra benchmarks a P4 1.6 at 3004 MIPS (theregister.com), so
estimate ~8700 MIPS for a 4.7 GHz P4. That's a little crude obviously.
=> 8700/.3 = 29000 times more MIPS, which is only 1 order of magnitude higher than the straight MHz difference. If SIMD had an order of magnitude effect (which it doesn't), that would be 2 orders of magnitude difference.
-Kevin
on x.x Ghz processors that they actually still don't need... my server runs beautifully with a pentium 166 and 64Mb of RAM, AND I still have money to feed the family.
C'mon people... I'm not saying nobody needs this (it does say high-end), or that 166Mhz is enough for everybody (it certainly isn't for a desktop), but why aren't people still not smarting up? Why do they keep buying a completely new PC every 2 years while they don't need it to write their word-document? (and i'm not even asking why they buy such crap that a pc with only half of the specifications could perform equally well).
Does rapid improvement in processor technology cancel out the need for developers to learn how to write better code on a particular platform in order to achieve the maximum possible benefit from Information Technology?
Background:
Remember the BBC Micro, the ZX Spectrum? When they first came out, games were slow and blocky. But then several years went by without any significant improvement in processor performance.
Therefore, in order to produce better software and better games, developers had to learn how to write better code on their favourite platforms. They developed techniques and tricks to make every Hz count.
Today, you can do impressive stuff with crap code, simply through virtue of the raw grunt of the processor.
Hence the question. Do they cancel out? If Intel had not brought out a new processor in the last 5 years, where would software be in relation? Better, worse, or same?
Achieve super high speeds for super short durations to impress the spectators.
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
Business as usual, I suppose. Once everyone has their 1.whatever GHz processors, they have to go and show off something faster. People need to realize that, despite all these newer, faster processors, we don't need them. The Space Shuttle still launches, performs missions, and lands without too many failures, and they're not running much more than a 486 equivalent. We don't need 4.7 GHz. 2 GHz is more than sufficient for everyday use.
/.ers. They won't be trying to scan, edit and compress 10 gigs of high quality video/audio data. They won't be compiling an insanely huge Linux Kernel. They won't be dabbeling in Voice Over IP. Hell, they probably mindlessly rely on MS apps to do the work for them, using Outlook, IE, and others.
When you think about it, the average user (AKA Joe and Jane Sixpack) do three basic things with computers: Internet (including e-mail, browsing and the occasional Multimedia site), Music, and Games. That's it. They're not ubergeeks like most of us
They'll get all wide-eyed and tickled pink at the thought of that kind of power, but all they'll really notice is windows opening faster. It's a huge waste of money, and they'd be too blinded by the thought of "this will make everything so much better" to notice.
It won't make MP3s play any clearer, it won't filter out the spam that clogs 90% of their inbox, and it sure won't make "HotChicksPorn.com" load any faster. Unless the Sixpack's are running SETI@Home, they wouldn't notice much of a difference and feel ripped off. Those FFTs would render rather quickly on a 4.7 GHz machine, though, which I wouldn't mind.
Production people like me would kill for a machine that fast. I do alot of digital video and audio work, and that kind of processing power would be most welcome. But people like me (and you, the ubergeeks of the world) are a relative rare breed. Maybe it's time for Intel and friends (or is it enemies) to start splitting demographics a little better and targeting specific types of "Joe and Jane Sixpacks" with different processors instead of just offering up the same two processors (Pentium and Celeron) to everyone as if we're all the same. The need to upgrade constantly isn't that big a deal, or at least it shouldn't be treated as such...
Blog Prophyts - Right On, Man
The Pentium Pro 200 was 1000 times as fast. These things are about 15-20 times that speed. The current line of CPU's are about 10,000 times as fast as an 8086.
If I remember correctly, the jump between a 8086 and a 8286 was about 10x in speed with only a doubling of clock speed. The 286 was 5 times as fast per clock cycle as a 8086. The 386 was about 1.5 times as fast per clock cycle as 286. Same with 486 over 386 and I think with Pentium over 486, both 1.5x. I'm pretty sure that's where it stopped. Speed/clock on the new P4's is now slower than the P3's. I think the P4's are about the same speed/clock as a 486 or maybe a Pentium. It's somewhere around ther. Does anyone know?
We need to have a unit of measure which is speed/clock.
-Eric
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