Flaw Delays Shipment Of New 'Canterwood' Pentium 4

bigal3du writes "Hardware-Unlimited has posted new information from Intel that they will be delaying the shipment of the new Pentium 4 3Ghz with an 800Mhz FSB. An Intel spokesman contacted Hardware-Unlimited early this morning to let the publication know that performance "anomolies" have been discovered, at the last minute, in validation testing and the processor will be temporarily delayed for shipment. Full details on Hardware-Unlimited.com Forums..." ninenet points to this PC Magazine article which explains the things that characterize the new chip and also mentions the delay.

Comments

Maybe No Glitch At All?

[Acidic_Diarrhea]

This comes from The Inquirer. A wild rumor is that there's only a small glitch and in actuality Intel just doesn't have enough stock to make the shipment. Either way, it's not good news for Intel's stock. But which is worse? Running into a problem in testing OR miscalculating how many units you need? I say the miscalculation represents more of a fundamental problem whereas a snag in testing is to be expected.

Ah, here's the text:
"Japanese web site PC Watch today claimed that Intel has put a stop to general shipments of the Pentium 4 3GHz and 800MHz chipset products because of a glitch discovered during testing.

If the report is correct - and we've contact Intel for clarification - it's rather an embarrassing admission.

The Japanese site thinks that Intel is using a small glitch as an excuse and in actual fact the problem is a severe limitation in supplies of the chipset and CPU.

Intel's embargo on the Canterwood chipset, which uses the 800MHz front side bus expired just a few hours ago, and there are already dozens of reviews of the product all over the world wide wibble."

Intel: Where Quality Is Job 0.99999999567

[tuffy]

Sorry, had to say it :)

Well duh...

[grub]

Flaw Delays Shipment Of New 'Canterwood' Pentium 4

Frankly I'm suprised a CPU made of wood would work at all.

Re:Bah

[philovivero]

In 1980, I had a TRS-80 CoCo where I could hold the "page-down" key and the text would fly by as fast as I could watch it.

Now I have a P4 2.4GHz machine, and when I hold down page-down, my whole machine grinds to a halt as my Rube Goldberg-like operating system tries to phone home to Microsoft about my text paging habits.

Regardless of the severity of the flaw...

[drgroove]

... its great to see Intel take the initiative on their product and prevent a chip w/ even a minor flaw from entering the marketplace. While their stock price might take a minor hit today on the news that shipment has been delayed, imagine the fiasco down the line if thousands of flawed processors were in the wild, and Intel had to do a recall? FWIW, this was the "Right Thing To Do".

If only other prominent tech companies (*cough* *microsoft* *cough*) would take this sort of lead and ensure that only products which were found to be free of flaws entered the market, instead of releasing half-baked products and using the customer base as guinea pigs... just imagine how better off we'd all be...

too much power != good

[2057]

The more powerful the chips intel pushes the less effcient the coder becomes, i remember when i used to tweak my programs so they would run optimally on a slower machines, now a days its like you need 192mb and 500mhz for word processing. People need to get back to the old school days when a 486/66mhz and 4mb RAM was minumum. I can understand how games evolve and more power is needed, but it's not just games that have this high requirement these days.

Obligatory Pentium Jokes

[xcomputer_man]

Q. How many Pentium designers does it take to screw in a light bulb?
A. 1.99999289345, but that's close enough for non-technical people.

Q. The Pentium conforms to IEEE standards for floating point math. If you fly in an airplane designed using a Pentium, what's the correct pronounciation of IEEE?
A. Aiieeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!

Q. What's another name for the Intel Inside sticker they put on PCs?
A. The warning label.

Re:Bah

[Anonymous Coward]

In 1980 I had a 1.023 MHz Apple ][+ and I could type ~70 WPM. Intel is pushing 3+ GHz chips and I can still only type ~70 WPM.

Hmm ..

Have you tried Mavis Beacon Typing Tutor? It may help.

http://www.mavisbeacon.com/

Definition of "good" development

[m11533]

Long ago the developer/hardware equation was changed. Originally, hardware was far more expensive than the people developing the software. That was when investing lots of energy into hand-optimizing was the proper tradeoff.

Years ago, before 1GHz was considered a short term possibility, hardware costs had decreased and software costs had increased, to the point where it is the DEVELOPER who is the most expensive piece of the equation. Thus, we now are at the point where, with the exception of a few very specialized segments, we do whatever it takes to optimize the developer time in building software. That is not to say that developers can be careless and wasteful. But that developers should not waste time optimizing code. IFF performance is an issue, THEN one takes measurements and optimizes critical areas consuming the majority of time. Beyond that, it just isn't worth it. Today's 3GHz machines with GB of RAM only reinforce that this is the only appropriate approach to software development.

Improve your Technique

[4of12]

Start thinking outside the box, dude.

Start by considering an economical language, based on the powers of two, which you'll have to agree as being more suitable for computers than some 105 key piece of junk.

For instance, start with only 8 letters, say,

asdfjkl;

and you should be able to improve your typing speed immensely.

Also, pressing the space bar lots of times b e t w e e n chara c te rs will push your word count up quite a b i t, too!

Sorry I can't provide more tips now, but I'm really busy producing some new CPU benchmark figures.