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Intel Announces New, Slower, Chip
kshkval writes "According to Business Week, Intel is marketing the Centrino, a 1.6 Ghz chip that is slower than previous laptop processors from Intel, but does more. Hey, isn't that what Apple and AMD have gotten so much guff about? The worm turns..."
First of all, some PowerPCs have AltiVec, which is more-or-less MMX. In any case if you discount MMX-accelerated memcpy applications don't use MMX anyway. We'd probably be better off with a DMA engine (or maybe a DSP). Secondly, the quote is referring to the fact that PowerPCs get more computation done per clock-cycle than x86 (particularly Intel) CPUs. So you should be measuring $/MIPS or somesuch (Intel (or rather AMD) probably still wins though).
There are a lot of interesting trade-offs in processor design and lately Intel has been optimizing for cycle time rather than performance. Long term this is bound to fail in market segments that actually care about performance but what Intel knows (and what most of the world is just beginning to figure out) is that the vast majority of the PC market is no longer performance oriented. With modern graphics cards even cutting edge games aren't the CPU suckers they once were.
Ben and Jerry's isn't a nice friendly company any longer.
It's a division of Unilever
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/710694.stm
While everything over at Benjerry.com makes you think all is happy and hippy in Vermont, the whole thing is a division of a Anglo-Dutch multinational.
I have a different take on it: I think this is a good chance for Intel to start focusing on minimization... If they do this "single chip" thing long enough, then PDAs, cellphones, gameboys, etc... might eventually be running on top of a single-chip style platform from Intel.
:)
I'm glad this is happening, more competition means better prices. I generally like Intel products, so this is good news for me.
Actually, AMD tried the "most stuff on a chip" technique several years ago, with built in video and NIC built into the support chips. They failed miserably. I actually purchased 5 of these systems to use on a network where the clients need barely more than a terminal. I sent all 5 back. Nvidia is atempting to do similar now, but its not very cost effective for most applications. Up to now, it has looked better on paper than in practice.
Hopefully, Intel will do better. I prefer Intel chips over everything else. (no comments from the peanut galley please) Doesn't mean I don't think they are full of crap in their marketing dept.
Tequila: It's not just for breakfast anymore!
* Intel® Pentium® M Processor
* Intel® 855 chipset family
* Intel® PRO/Wireless network connection
Further explaining:
Yeah, but the processor (the Pentium M) will also be available separately.
from the article:
Although the CPU itself -- called Pentium M -- that's part of the Centrino brand will also be sold separately, most analysts believe that Intel will offer PC makers major discounts -- and advertising dollars -- to make the bundle irresistible. Intel is expected to offer generous reimbursements to PC makers that mention Centrino in their ads.
What the hell are you talking about "Genius"?
Nearly everything you said is wrong or mis-informed.
MMX? Ya mean SSE/iSSE? Well it's AltiVec in PPC and it produces higher Blast numbers than Intel's.
Cost to clock cycle? PPC do more instructions pcc. How is this more $?
Embedded? Go open up a Mac and look. The CPUs are not embedded.
Servers? Have you looked at Xserve?
Christ on a moped! I used to work for Intel and I can't even defend anything you've said.
- I am made of meat.
The "Centrino" which was previously known by the codename "Banias" is the first ever CPU Intel has designed specifically for mobile computing.
It's the combination of the a mutant P3 with the quad-pumped P4 bus, SSE2, lots of power-saving tricks, and an assload of L2 cache (1MB!).
From the limited previews I have seen of it, these things are quite nice, especially with Intel combining the new CPU with mainboard built-in wireless networking adapter. They perform well, and do consume significantly less power than any other mobile chip (excluding the Transmeta CPU, as I have come to the conclusion that they never really existed outside of Japan. Have you seen one in North America?).
"Centrino" is now officially branded Pentium-M...a rather obvious naming strategy IMHO, but a good one. Look out next year, once Intel has its 90nm fabrication process up and running, we should see "Dothan" code-named CPUs...with 2MB L2 cache...mmm
Btw, this news story is old, Slashdot admins, pick up the slack!
------- "From bored to fanboy in 3.8 asian girls" ----------
The Centrino Brand is a combination of three main things.
- The new Banias processor
- The Montara 852/855 Chipset
- Integrated 802.11b
This means that mobile computer makers can make new lighter, faster, cheaper, and colder laptops.Centrino computers are designed for Mobile features, which doesn't always neccesarily mean speed. Banias runs colder than comparable processors from Intel, it has a host of new features to support all the crazy things laptops want to do (Better power management, bus control, hotkey support, more feature rich graphics etc...)
Intel is trying to jump on the new Mobile computing pattern. There is less and less of a focus on the absolute fastest processor and more of a focus on different ways (espeically easier ways) of using your computer. I mean who really uses all of their cpu cycles on a 3Ghz P4 with HT anyway (some people but not most)?
When wireless really picks up and people have reliable, quick, super lightweight laptops that can easily fit in a backpack or briefcase sales might pickup like Intel hopes.
"A Pentium 4 without proper cooling will die just as quickly as an Athlon without proper cooling."
Hardly.
"I won't mod you down - I feel the need to call you a twit explicitly, rather than by implication."
I cant believe some freak idiot modded your post informative. AltiVec IS NOT MMX. MMX was some stupid extra instructions that resulted in some performance gains for some apps. AltiVec is an incredible advanced vector prossessing unit that doubles or even triples the chip speed.
-You may license this sig for only $6.99.
"I was very disappointed when Intel bought ARM"
Intel did not buy ARM. Intel obtained DECs StrongARM unit to settle a lawsuit. ARM is an independant company that makes chip designs. ARM based chips are made by many different companies. StrongARM is a particular ARM based chip made by Digital/Intel.
"Only they never got there, so the StrongARM has basically been stagnant"
StrongARM is not stagnant, it simply received a new marketing name for the latest version. They call them XScales now, and they are very popular in networking equipement and PDAs. I've got a 400Mhz Xscale based Sharp Zaurus SL-C700 in front of me right now and it doesn't feel stagnent at all.
If my application doesn't use more than 60% of the power of one of the low power chips yet has a requirement of long battery life, I'm idiotic to use an Intel anything! Off-loading mpeg decoding or other processor intensive tasks to a task specific chip and reduce cpu load and cpu requirements.
Kinda like using a sledgehammer to pound in a finishing nail. Both will do the job but which one is less likely to cause unwanted side effects? (ie smashed fingers)
...actually means "doily", usually made with the crochet.
Here's the
Translation and two examples.
Do you understand the concept of hyperbole? It was precisely because of Motorola's focus on the embedded market that I called the G4 an embedded processor. Note that I called Banias an embedded processor as well, which it clearly is not.
Next, the 2 and 3 GHz marks are not useless. The thing PowerPC people don't understand is that Performance = ClockRate * Efficiency. Note that both are linear factors. Raising the effifiency does not improve the overall performance any more than raising clock rate. However, raising ClockRate is a lot easier than raising efficiency, because most code (outside of a few problem domains) does not lend itself to extensive parallization. Intel, with the P4 architecture, made an engineering decision to emphasise clock rate over efficiency. As the benchmarks clearly show, Intel achieved their goal of having absolutely incredible performance, to the point where a P4 provides more than 70% the floating point performance of a Power4 in CPU-bound benchmarks. PowerPC-heads can wave their arms and shout "efficiency" as much as they want, all that matters is the end result performance.
Lastly, the G4 is a sucky chip. Its clock rates are lower than its x86 competitors. It's IPC is lower than chips like the Alpha or POWER. It's overall performance isn't very good. In an age when x86 chips (which were famous for bad I/O) have 4.2GB/sec-6.4GB/sec of memory bandwidth, the G4 is stuck in the '90s, with only 1.3GB/sec of memory bandwidth. On top of all that, the desktop version is expensive, and the high clock rate models are only available in an Apple. The G4 is great for a number of uses. XServe, for example, is a good use of the G4 because of its good heat dissapation characteristics. So is the Apple laptop line. But as a general purpose desktop CPU, it blows chunks.
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
you can get very small (~10 inch screen) laptops from fujitsu, sony, and i believe a few others that run on a crusoe processor. all the ones i have seen were 867mhz.
Your 3D graphics card has a vector processor on it. That's why it can perform the 3D to 2D transformations, lighting calculations etc. orders of magnitude faster that the main CPU in your computer at a much lower clock frequency. SIMD instructions on the main CPU go some way towards vector processing (3DNow!, SSE, AltiVec).
Stick Men
Hmmm, although some people recognized this as old news, nobody seems to have read the Tom's Hardware's Guide article comparing 1.6GHz Pentium-M with a Pentium 4-M 2.2GHz
. html
... VERY interesting article, read it, and it should leave you drooling for one of those laptops ...
http://www.tomshardware.com/mobile/20030205/index
I'll only say that under most applications P-M beats P4-M, maybe because of it's 1Mb cache and design changes