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Intel to Increase Stages in Prescott
Alizarin Erythrosin writes "Further contributing to the MHz Myth, The Register and ZDNet are reporting that the new P4 core, codenamed Prescott, will have a longer pipeline then Northwood. No official numbers have been released, but The Reg is saying an Intel spokesman said that 30 stages seems to be a reasonable estimate. As most of us know, a longer pipeline can lead to slowdowns in the form of branch mispredictions and pipeline stalls. 'And just as the PIII proved faster than the early P4s in some applications, it's likely that Northwood will similarly prove faster than Prescott, which has clearly been designed for speeds of the order of 4GHz.'"
Right, Intel always has had the fastest chip, if you ignore things like Alpha, Athlon, Opteron, Power, PowerPC, and others.
And of course, Intel's motivations are entirely performance, or at least price/performance, not marketing.
The fact that every other company has chosen a different design decision and has made better chips as a result is just an illusion foisted on us by those who think there own thoughts.
I've had this sig for three days.