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Current Processors Tested With Linux
Happy-Jollies writes "The team at LinuxHardware.org have kept us up-to-date on the latest in processors for quite some time now and they're at it again. With the latest release of the Pentium 4 'Prescott,' many Linux users will be deciding where to spend their money. LinuxHardware.org's round-up takes a look at the Prescott, Northwood, Extreme Edition, and the AMD Athlon 64."
Insert obligatory smartass comment about how they should be running their site on one of those high-end chips right now.
This guy is way out there
Better than nothing until the ./ effect wears off:
Intel's Prescott, Intel's Extreme Edition, and AMD's Athlon 64 3400+ posted by augustus on Monday February 02, @11:51AM from the CPU-Gods dept. Today Intel unveiled the next great chip in their line of Pentium 4 processors. This chip codenamed "Prescott" has been talked about for quite some time and we hope the chip lives up to the hype. With new features like an increased L2 cache and new instructions, the Prescott has the goods on paper. Along with this new processor, Intel also released a speed bump to their "Extreme Edition" line which brings the chip up to 3.4GHz. The Extreme Edition chips encompass the same features of their normal "Northwood" Pentium 4 cousins but also add an additional 2MB of L3 cache to the existing 512KB of L2. In this review we will introduce you to these new Intel processors and also bring in the Athlon 64 desktop processors now available at 3400+ model numbers. If your ready for a look into what AMD and Intel have in store for you today, read on. Intel's Chips First, we'll talk about Intel's Extreme Edition part. The Intel Pentium 4 Extreme Edition offers nothing fancy like new instructions or a new manufacturing process. Instead, Intel took the brute force approach on this CPU and simply added an additional 2MB of L3 cache. This wasn't even a processor redesign for Intel, they simply took their Xeon MP processor and repackaged it in a Socket 478 socket, compatible with today's 865/875 series motherboards. Many have said that this processor wasn't even planned but that Intel decided they needed an answer to AMD's Athlon 64 FX line. This wouldn't be confirmed by Intel, of course, but it's not like any processor company to spring random new products on the industry without a fair amount of hype. The Extreme Edition processor was launched at 3.2GHz and was extremely difficult to get. About the only way to find one initially was to buy a new system through a select few retailers. Not only were they hard to get but the price was prohibitive at around $1000 for the processor alone. The processor is available now through many more retailers but the price has wavered little. The 3.4GHz already seems like it will be a little easier to find than it's predecessor but expect to add at least $100+ for the extra 200MHz of the 3.4GHz model. The Prescott is an entirely different story from the Extreme Edition. The Prescott has been on Intel's road map for quite some time and was a necessary step in processor evolution. The biggest feature of the Prescott that you'll read about is the move to a 90nm manufacturing process from the previous 130nm process. As we've discussed in other articles about process shrinks, this allows for two things. First, it allows Intel to shrink die sizes, resulting in more CPUs per wafer (the base from which CPUs are carved). This will lower Intel's cost per chip. Second, it will allow for the processor to operate with less power consumption per transistor, due to the fact that the electrons will have to travel a shorter distance between transistors. Another change in this manufacturing process is the use if strained silicon which allows for an easier flow of electrons. The next big feature in this processor is the addition of 512KB more L2 cache bringing the total to 1MB. This increase in cache size is something that always seems to speed up the majority of applications. This allows for more of the application's code to fit into a extremely fast portion of memory sitting right next to the processor running at the full processor clock speed. While this seems like something relatively easy to add to a processor, it adds a great deal of transistors to the core which increases the cost of manufacturing. Finally, there are some architectural changes for the Pentium 4 that come with the Prescott. The first is that the pipeline has been extended and reorganized to make the processor more efficient. Along with this reorganization, the way memory is handled internally has been optimized