Intel to Dump Pentium 4 in Favor of Pentium M

Opinion writes "According to The Register, Intel is to dump its Pentium 4 plans in favour of the new Pentium M architecture. The scrapped Tejas and Jayhawk processors represented Intel's next-gen 90nm P4 CPUs, due to arrive in 2005."

Comments

Finally...

[LoganTeamX]

Someone with half a brain in charge of development at Intel has stepped forward. Their mobile processors are all that's saving them for the non-enterprise arena. But oh no, they'll need to abandon the GHz race! Whatever will the fanboys do!?!?

It's good that they didn't call this pentium 5

[foidulus]

Because the name pentium came as the successor to the 80486,(ie 5, thus pentium) which was the successor to the 386, 286,186,8086. Thus the 5th generation of the 5th generation chip would have been kind of dumb. I think they should just abandon the pentium name all together, but by this point it has too much name recognition.

Change of ideas

[SavedLinuXgeeK]

As stated in a previous article, I think, Intel has been running the PIV name for a long, long time,(in computer years), and now with AMD64 coming out, people will see the PIV as old, and the AMD as new, even if things are comparable. Consumers are extremely superficial (Speaking from sales experience). I think this may just help Intel get some more umph into their line, before 64-bit hits critical mass.

Just an additional scheme for reducing heat

[elwinc]

After all, you can't go in increasing CPU wattage indefinitely. I can recall the days far past when 30 watts was considered power hungry for a CPU. Sure, you can win a little with more and more rococo CPU cooler designs, but at some point you have to look for still more ways to limit CPU power. The mobile chips do it by varying their clock rates and turning parts of themselves off part of the time. Just think of it as an additional scheme for reducing CPU heat output.

Re:Just an additional scheme for reducing heat

[Rosco P. Coltrane]

After all, you can't go in increasing CPU wattage indefinitely.

For the n-th time, "wattage" isn't a word (perhaps it is, but then only in the M-W). It's called "power".

I can recall the days far past when 30 watts was considered power hungry for a CPU.

I remember a day where it took between 1 and 3 days to complete a raytrace in Povray, where it takes 2 hours tops today. You want to go back to that?

Sure, you can win a little with more and more rococo CPU cooler designs, but at some point you have to look for still more ways to limit CPU power.

I don't think they're waiting for you to tell them to go look for solutions. You'll notice that CPU speeds increase much faster than the power they require, that it's not a linear relationship, and I suspect this doesn't happen magically.

The mobile chips do it by varying their clock rates and turning parts of themselves off part of the time. Just think of it as an additional scheme for reducing CPU heat output.

Run distributed.net or setiathome, or do raytracing on a laptop, and I guarantee you your battery won't last long. The point of power-saving by throttling the CPU and turning parts of it off is to save power while the user does nothing (typically 99% of the time when doing word processing).

Re:Religious Nomenclature?

[CodeMonkey4Hire]

Most of the products that come out of Chandler, AZ are named after Arizona geologic features. Their codenames are chosen so that there is no possible infringement. Since it is not possible to trademark geological features (or Biblical/historical features), they are safe bets. As the previous poster noted, there is some work going on at their [relatively] new site in Isreal.

Model numbers vs frequency

[Mad Quacker]

Now it all makes sense why Intel wants to use model numbers, their newer (faster) cpu's will run at a lower clock rate. Looks like they let marketing run engineering when the produced the P4, and now it's come to resolution.

Re:hrm

[twbecker]

It's the fan in my pc that's loud not the processor. even small fans make noise.

Uhh, yeah. And the reason you NEED that big fan is because of all the heat that CPU is generating. Smaller fans = less noise.

I still have a couple Pentium I with MMX running and without a hitch. How much longer are you talking about?

And what kind of temps do they run at? Much cooler than a 3.2Ghz Prescott, I can promise you.

Not to sound like an Apple zealot (I'm far from it), but it seems like you've bought into the "Mhz myth" hook, line and sinker. Lower power and lower speeds does not need to equal lower performance.

Re:hrm

[Junks Jerzey]

I still have a couple Pentium I with MMX running and without a hitch. How much longer are you talking about?

That was back when Intel x86 chip ran fairly cool. The real question is "how long does a Prescott-level P4 chip last?"

Re:hrm

[pohl]

It's the fan in my pc that's loud not the processor.

Ever wonder about the reason why the fan is sitting there right on top of the processor? Could there be some sort of relationship between the two? I'd wager that if the processor ran cooler, you might be able to dispense with the processor-fan altogether and just use a heat-sink which, being just a solid hunk of metal, makes no noise whatsoever. This could be the next giant leap in Quiet Computing! Imagine a beo...

Re:hrm

[mobiux]

"but it seems like you've bought into the "Mhz myth" hook, line and sinker"

I think that this is going to be a HUGE problem for intel. For years this has been the major marketing tool they've used. So now, they are just going to say, "Um, oh yeah, all that stuff we told you, about mhz, ghz, and stuff, that doesn't really apply to us anymore."

AMD and Apple really should take advantage of this and do a little "we were right all along" ad.

Re:Power consumption is important

[ballpoint]

Not only for laptops or server rooms. My power consumption at home has increased by 25% in three years due to increasing computer use by kids & wife.

I'd like to install still more always-on equipment like webcams, video servers and such. But, with energy prices that will probably triple over the next 10 years, I'm not going to be able to afford these increases much longer.

Pentium M vs AMD xxxx+

[swillden]

Will this move make the AMD "marketing ratings" irrelevant? They were invented to help make it clear that AMD processors performed as well as their P4 competition, even though the P4s were clocked much higher. The Pentium M, however, is based on the P3 architecture, which has always had performance that is comparable to the AMD chips at a given clock rate.

Will this now force AMD to find a graceful way to drop the marketing ratings, lest they appear to be artificially inflating their processors' performance?

Re:End of an era?

[Paladin128]

It's an unexpected turn that makes a LOT of sense. If you read the article, the real catalyst for this change is the decision to go with 2 or more cores on one die that share the same L2 cache. The P4 is a poor architecture to do this with. Yes, nothing can really beat it at simple integer math, but it's got lots of problems:

1) The core is fscking big!
2) high frequency == draws lots of juice == runs way too hot
3) 20 stage pipeline (or like 30 in case of Prescott) makes penalties way too high on a branch mis-prediction, and requires more cache to minimize the impact.

The Pentium M architecture has a relatively high IPC, and lack of int throughput that is lost from lower overall clockspeed can be overcome by paralellism that multicore will bring. It also is rather efficient as far as power goes, and a much smaller core overall.

Re:hrm

[devaldez]

Gotta love revisionist history...AMD was the king of MHz marketing back in the day...oh yeah, don't worry that we're AMD cuz our K6 is clocked at the same speed, so we're just as fast...except that it didn't work that way for them, either.

Feel free to hate marketing (I'm in marketing and I hate it), but keep the right sense of perspective and history or you simply lose credibility. If you want to hate a company, simply hate them, don't seek ways to justify the hate.

Why 64-bit x86 chips aren't catching on

[MarcQuadra]

Well I think the reason AMD64 chips aren't catching on as quickly as they could is that the AMD roadmap clearly shows how they're moving to a new socket soon. Why would you buy or invest R&D into a machine that is essentially dead-ended in terms of CPU availability?

I think that once the socket-939 chips come out and the platform 'congeals' into a long-term solution you'll see more of these things selling.

It also doesn't help that there's no version of Windows that takes advantage of 64-bitness yet, or that a HUGE portion of the IT people making purchasing decisions still doesn't trust AMD CPUs.

Re:where does that leave performance freaks like m

[Gannoc]

No AMD suggestions please. I've never found them to be as stable as Intel CPUs .

I have an Intel machine myself, but have had AMDs in the past. The reason people think that AMD chips are unstable is that many people buy AMD processors when they're trying to get a cheap computer, and also use cheap memory, cheap motherboards, etc.

Get an AMD with a good motherboard, and it is as stable as an Intel.

Increasing number of cores...

[Spoing]

Here's a guess about what Intel is up to. From the brief article -- and keeping in mind this is The Register -- it looks like Intel is going for two targets;

1. Smaller; faster with lower power.
2. Multiple logical and physical cores; multi-threaded apps/OS will do well.

These two basic tagets seem to be a good idea;

1. Processing speed is really damn good now for single tasks.
2. More tasks are becoming standard, so having the 'extras' run without delay on a seperate core makes the system seem more snappy.
3. Some tasks can be CPU intensive and benifit from the extra cores; a reason to upgrade for Intel customers.
4. Speed per-core will increase, though the raw speed in MHZ is costly (in power and because it costs more to make the fab plants) so the fewer fab changes the better or being able to spread the operating life out for more years would be good.
5. With the speed and core # increase, lower-end devices become practical; disable the cores not needed just like other parts were disabled in the past (FPU, cache, ...).
6. Power savings; some cores can be throttled down when hybernating without taking down the whole processor.
7. Multi-processing; if you need the extra umph, plugging another set of cores in might be an easy upgrade or for use in a cluster. (Though CPU speed is not typically the main issue even for many complex problems.)

Re:where does that leave performance freaks like m

[IWorkForMorons]

(No AMD suggestions please. I've never found them to be as stable as Intel CPUs ).

Bud...then you're limiting your speed and power right there. AMD systems are quite stable from my experience. Usually, it's when people buy bad equipment to surround their chip that causes them to think the chip is bad. Such as my own recent stablitily problems. After replacing the CPU fan and heatsink, replacing the power supply, and very nearly sinking $300 into a water-cooling system because I thought the chip was over heating, I spent $25 on a memory heatsink. Haven't had a single problem with unstablity since. And believe me...this system holds it's own against the hot and heavy Intel systems that are rated at several hundred Megahertz faster...

Intel is floundering

[Mr. Neutron]

It seems to me like Intel just doesn't know what it's doing these days. While AMD does new and innovative things, like the first consumer desktop 64-bit x86 archetecture chip, what's Intel doing? Die shrinks and more absurdly drawn-out pipelines, it seems. If I were in charge of the shop at Intel, I'd set the following priorities:

1. Make a 64-bit challenger to Athlon64. If it means butchering the Itanium die and adding a 32-bit co-processor, so be it.

2. Enable SMP on something faster than Tualatin.

3. Wake up to the fact that Intel can no longer dominate the CPU market on name recognition and MHz rating alone.

All I can say is, at least Intel is opening up the way for more competition. It won't be long before the market share is split 60-40.

Re:End of an era?

[anderm7]

Yeah, I agree. I this is a great move. I'm an EE in Microelctronics, and I had been very dissapointed in Intel's tricks to get MHz up. For instance, those overly long pipelines. I'm glad they finally decided to come around and realized that both MHz and CPI(cycles per instruction) matter.

To first order, a chip is only limited by the setup & hold time of a latch, but that may not be a very good chip. It may run at 50 GHz, but its not going to do much more than heat up your case.

Re:Intel is so far behind anyway

[maw]

They definitely couldn't copyright a number like 80586. It's even possible that they couldn't trademark it.

Never going to happen

[msgmonkey]

Power pins are the least of the problems, bus protocols is the main reason for incompatibility.

AMD have gone with hypertransport and integrated membory controller in the Opteron/Athlon 64.

AFAIK Pentium-M uses a "hub" architecture with a 400MHZ link with the hub also providing the DDR memory controller amongst other things.

The reason Socket7 boards worked with different chips is because they all used the orginal Pentium bus protocol. With Pentium Pro, Intel went with a new GTL bus which was n't licensed to AMD, so AMD went with the Alpha bus with the K7(as there was ex Alpha people working on K7).

Re:Lemme guess...

[dasmegabyte]

I don't remember these hypothetical old days!

My first PC was a 386-40. Two years later replaced by a 486-66 (new motherboard needed). Two years later replaced by a 486-120 (new motherboard needed). Next up was a Celeron 166 (new motherboard again), then a K6-233 (new motherboard for EDO ram) and a K6-2 350 after that (new motherboard to support the higher multiplier). I went intel for a little while, dual celeron, and after that a p3. New motherboards for each. Finally, I settled down with a top of the line Athlon thunderbird 1 gig on a top of the line motherboard.

A motherboard which only supports chips up to 1.4 GHz. And whose top-of-the-line clock makes at 200 MHz.

*SIGH*. Each chip upgrade, usually performed at 2 year intervals, has required a new motherboard to take advantage of a higher clock speed or "better" memory or a new graphics system or USB. In fact, i'm beginning to thing that I'd be better served by a PC industry that integrated chips onto motherboards to save costs and improve cooling options. Over and under fans? You got it!

Re:hrm

[Doomdark]

AMD and Apple really should take advantage of this and do a little "we were right all along" ad.

Hardly. That'd only be relevant for part of geek population, or Apple loyalists, because:

• General populations attention span (half a Friends episode or so) prevents them from even remembering Intel's earlier claims
• People never heard anyone claiming Mhz thing was a myth (it was only used by non-Intel companies, minor players for many computer illiterates); for them "Intel inside" and "this goes to eleven" sales speeches were all the "facts" needed.
• Intel wouldn't have to explain lower clock frequencies, just wait few months for new designs to catch up. It's not like they stopped speeding up frequencies, just that M design _currently_ uses lower than what 4 series was currently designed to use

Any decent marketing department should be able to fairly easily sell change like this. If they anticipated significant trouble, this decision wasn't announced at this point, rest assured. It's not like design decisions for longer-running production lines didn't radically change fairly often. That's their job, to explain and spin it appropriately. And in this case there's enough positive spin to go around. Just imply these are the "wireless chips" (idiotic term, for sure, but only for people who spend few seconds to think about it), and extend from there.

Re:AMD

[TheLink]

Yeah. Maybe there have been one or two searches for opteron servers on Dell's search page :). Anyone looking for an Opteron version of the Poweredge 1600SC?

But their hands are probably tied. Rumour is that Dell has committed to buying USD5 billion of Intel stuff. I suppose that's how Dell gets real cheap Intel stuff? Now I'm wondering if Dell has a "get out" clause (they should if they are sane) somewhere, and if it does, what it is and whether it is close to applying... Watch Intel and Dell closely to see who is squirming the most, and perhaps you might figure more out.

It's worth supporting AMD just to watch the Intel and Dell show. Bwahahaha.

Still I'm sure Intel will manage to turn things around. Sure looks like they've the stomach to make the hard decisions based on technical stuff when it comes down to the crunch (plus plenty of reserve belly fat). Of course it took them a while (judging from the recent presentation by the ex-Intel chap) but there's plenty of inertia/momentum involved when making chips esp when you've been doing things well the past X years. Intel can afford to make a mistake or two every now and then, as long as it corrects them eventually.

Not sure about the Itanic though - my guess is it'll remain one of the fringe chips. If Intel doesn't make a good server class "Pentium M 64", then AMD is going to take that market (and Dell is in for a rough ride). If Intel does make a good AMD64 chip, I don't see that many people flocking to the Itanic. Heh.

If Intel screwed up/miscalculated[1] and can only launch a decent competitor in 2005+, Dell's competitors can take significant market share IF they play the Opteron card well. But which x86 server maker wants to piss Intel off by playing the Opteron card and which can actually pull it off? Sun? IBM? HP??

[1] Looks like Intel's 64bit extensions aren't 100% AMD64 compatible. That might be intentional, and not a problem in itself. The problem is if Microsoft insists on some things that Intel has left out (e.g. the NX stuff). Chips take some time to be fixed, tested etc ...