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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."
I'll pick up as many as i can carry..
So... What's the deal with Moore's law? It appears that heat density vs. pricing trends are now causing microprocessors to compete with charcoal (very hot, very cheap).
Is this the end? Or is Intel just trying to squeeze every last drop of cost out of a deal with IBM on their silicon-on-insulator patents?
Life is the leading cause of death in America.
Oh well..time to read the article.
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!?!?
One of the 187.
This seems like a really smart idea. Dont go an get the Ultra-Gigaherz-Processor but a descend, processor that consumes only a low amount of power -> Longer batterylife for laptops -> Silent PCs -> Longer lifetime of the processor (?)
Spelling mistakes: My is english spoken not tongue of mother.
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.
due to arrive in 2005
Shouldn't that be Pentium MMV?
The more laptops out there, the more important are power saving CPUs. Pentium-M's are a good step in the right direction after the P4 90nm debacle.
Even in the server market, cutting on power consumption is getting more and more important. If you have a park of 1000+ machines in a data center, power consumption matters.
cpghost at Cordula's Web.
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.
je suis parce que j'aime
This really shouldn't be a suprise to -anyone- who's been paying attention to what's been going on.
:)
Prescott is disturbingly hot, and the next-gen chips had no real hope of being much cooler. At most 10-15%, which wouldn't have gotten near their MHz goals.
P-M, on the other hand, is a damned good chip in its own right, has better IPC, and is a better CPU, all around, than the P4 line.
Now, what does this mean for those of us in the enterprise space? Are we -really- going to have to wait until 2006 for a new chip iteration from Intel? If that's the case (and I -really- doubt it), AMD would have a disturbingly large (and long) opening in which to pitch its wares...Intel would definately lose marker share in the server arena at that point.
So, multi-core P-M chips for the desktop next year-ish. So we're stuck with the hotplate known as Prescott until then. Guess I'll be sticking with AMD for a while yet
Dothan is in due course expected form the basis for 'Jonah', Intel's first two-core Pentium M, due to ship during H2 2005, possibly at 65nm. To date, Jonah has been scheduled to be succeeded by 'Merom' and 'Conroe', two chips based on the same architecture, during H1 2006. While Merom is to be pitched at notebooks, Conroe - crucially - is a desktop chip.
Dothan: Meaning: two wells. A famous pasture-ground where Joseph found his brethren watching their flocks. Here, at the suggestion of Judah, they sold him to the Ishmaelite merchants (Gen. 37:17). It is mentioned on monuments in B.C. 1600.
Jonah (We all know who Jonah was and/or you need to back to sunday school....)
Merom (WebBible Encyclopedia) - christianAnswers.Net. Merom. Meaning: height. a lake in Northern Palestine through which the Jordan flows
Looks like Intel got some religion....
"All great things are simple & expressed in a single word: freedom, justice, honor, duty, mercy, hope." --Churchill
Have they been able to ramp up the speeds for this architecture? None of the articles that I've read even speculate on what speeds these would be introduced at. I know Intel was planning on releasing a 2.0GHz Pentium M in the near future, but what about for desktops?
Side note: "Whitefield" a new processor in the Xeon line based somewhat aroudn the Pentium M, was created in India.
Casual Games/Downloads
We've been on 32bit chips for quite some time..
:(
Is 32bits enough? Is that why 64bit chips don't
seem to be catching on? or does the fact that
AMD and Intel seem to have fairly different
workings to their interface (AMD's seems fairly
simple, I haven't looked at Intel's).
Slightly related,
It seems both Intel and AMD stopped shipping free
copies of their Architecture Manuals.
Looks like the recent AMD press and popularity has forced Intel to rethink its business strategy. Here is my most recent ocrrespondence with Dell Sales Support. You should find it amusing: Problem Description: I am in the market for an AMD machine. I have been browsing your website but can't find an AMD processor-based machine. Do you sell any AMD machines? If not, I will shop elsewhere. Thank You. Dear Valued Customer, Thank you for choosing Dell Online Consumer Customer Care. I apologize for the inconvenience caused with regard to this issue. I have looked through your e-mail and show that currently Dell is not offering AMD machines. I have forwarded your message to management and I assure you they will look into this issue and will work on making improvements based on your feedback. Once again, I apologize and truly regret any frustration this matter may have caused. Thank you for your patience and understanding. They are both greatly appreciated. If you have any further questions or concerns, please visit the following website to contact us. www.DellCustomerCare.com Respectfully, Alexander ~DTC41593 7:00 AM to 3:30 PM CST Mon to Fri Dell's Online Consumer Customer Care
Interesting how P4 Northwood did so well against Athlon XP, mainly because of Intel's "speed demon" approach (trading IPC for higher clock speeds). Whereas Pentium-M brings them back in line with the kinds of IPC we see from AMD and IBM.
I won't pretend I know anything more about CPU design, maybe someone who does can comment on whether this means Intel made a bad bet with the long pipelines or whether there's some other reason why P-M holds more promise than P4...?
There will be laptop and desktop versions. The big deal is that they're putting two or four lower power CPUs in one package with shared L2 cache.
You were 80% angel, 10% demon. The rest was hard to explain. - Over The Rhine
"Math in a song is good."-Linford
It has been known for quite some time that the Pentium-M processors would outperform desktop chips even when clocked at a higher frequency.
Seems that Intel finally wised up and is exploiting the technology in the Pentium-M Chips to lower its development costs even though that isnt explicitly stated in the article.
Yes, I did RTFA.
What makes you think that? Why wouldn't you want to put a Pentium-M into a desktop machine?
-- *My* journal is more interesting than *yours*...
1979 - 86 (186 existed too but was a failure)
1982 - 286
1986 - 386
1989 - 486
1993 thru 2004 - Pentium (meaning 5-something), with a sub-version number
So, like, where's the Hexium, Heptium, Octium?
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
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.
--- Often in error; never in doubt!
We have speculated that this could only happen if Intel knocks Tejas on the head. Sounds like a boxing Match
War isn't about who's right. It's about who's left.
There is more on The Inq here:
http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=15760/ www.theinquirer.net/?article=15768
http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=15749
http:/
And more coming soon, this story is far from over.
-Charlie
Disclaimer: I write for The Inq, but I did not do these stories.
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.
"I don't know that atheists should be considered citizens, nor should they be considered patriots." George HW Bush
I've been out of the processor loop WAY too long!
who are those slashdot people? they swept over like Mongol-Tartars.
Jonah (We all know who Jonah was and/or you need to back to sunday school....)
Not eveyone comes from a Judeo-Christian background
Looks like Intel got some religion....
I highly doubt it. Well, maybe they worship the $.
. there used to be a sig here.....
Is that pronounced Pentium "emm" or Pentium "One Thousand?"
Signed,
Confused Mac User
I'm in the hole of the broadband donut.
In the article, they mentioned 2- and 4-core chips coming out in 2005 and 2006. How long will it take the unix and windows operating systems to take full advantage of all the cores? Are they already there? Does software running on these systems need to be specially written and/or compiled in order to take advantage of the multiple cores or will they mostly serve to handle multitasking?
Let's go Hurricanes!!! 2006 Stanley Cup Champions!!!
If Intel is moving to low power multicores chips what will this mean in terms of os licenses that limit the number of cpus which can be used at any one time such as MS? Will the likes of MS relax the licensing terms so that this type of technology will take off or will they use it as an excuse to make more money and kill off demand for multicore cpus? I wonder if Intel has discussed this with MS?
Well, there goes my plan for having a Tejas Longhorn computer...
This is great news from intel. The Pentium-M absolutely kicks the Pentium 4's butt! Itll be interesting to see how they market this seeing as they've been the ones pushing the "More Mhz means a faster CPU" Idea. Also, i'tll be interesting how they market the celeron line as well.
I always thought naming a processor chip after a deputy minister who is responsible for transport but prefers to drive high-performance cars (Jaguars) for short distances, was the equivalent of putting on metal armour, climbing to a mountain during a thunderstorm, and waving a sword in the air while making disparaging comments about the gods.
Wow. This is amazing. The P6 (PPro, PII, PIII) architecture is coming back to the desktop. This does make pretty good sense. The P6 has high IPC, and by applying some Pentium 4 tricks (Quad-pumped FSB, longer pipeline), this can make for a killer CPU. For more information, check out this Ars Technica Article on the Pentium-M's P6 heritage. The chip doesn't even lie about it - its CPUID reports a P6 family CPU.
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.
"The problem with internet quotations is that many are not genuine" -Abraham Lincoln
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?"
"So, like, where's the Hexium, Heptium, Octium?"
I believe the term you are groping for is 'Opteron'.
-Charlie
(Apologies, I couldn't resist such low hanging fruit).
Today's processors let you fry that egg with ease, while simultaneously calculating whether the egg preceeded the chicken, render the resulting proto-fowl in stunning 3D, with time left over to disprove your own existance.
Just as irrigation is the lifeblood of the Southwest, lifeblood is the soup of cannibals. -- Jack Handy
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...
The "cue the foo posts in 3, 2, 1..." posts will commence with no subsequent foo posts in 3, 2, 1...
Does this mean... We have to wait longer, in order for us to run Longhorn on its recommended hardware?
I rather be free in hell than a slave in heaven.
From what I've read the Pentium M is nothing more than a souped up P6 core [slightly longer pipeline, 1MB power optimized cache and SSE/SSE2 iirc].
So really it's the PIII v2.0.
Last I checked though the Athlon XP [and Barton] still whoop the PIII's ass and probably the Pentium M at equal clockrates [let's not forget that 2.2Ghz AMD Bartons exist...].
So my guess is if they do ditch the P4 it won't be directly to the Pentium M but instead a design based off it [but with a higher IPC than the P-M] cuz otherwise they'll get screwed in the processor speed wars and that would look awful stupid.
Tom
Someday, I'll have a real sig.
Its finally time to build myself a new PC. I just want the most powerful Intel-driven box I can get my hands on, for heavy-duty emulation etc. I don't care about power/heat/noise issues as I am building a desktop and will sacrifice all of that for outright performance.
It sounds like the fastest new pentium M will be 2Ghz, will that REALLY compete performance-wise against the forthcoming 3.6Ghz Pentium 4?
(No AMD suggestions please. I've never found them to be as stable as Intel CPUs ).
Desktops have been in trouble for a while. A new CPU comes out with an 8% higher clockspeed, and then it uses 15% more power. Obviously there was a limit to how long that could continue, especially as those diddly performance increases weren't providing tangible benefits (compare an 8% clockspeed increase with switching to a dual core processor, for example). And at the same time the desktop market has been being heavily outpaced by laptops and mobile devices.
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.
/. article about fans coming to market that run almost silent.
hehe, my daily used desktop for almost all my personal stuff is a G4 running OS X 10.3. I am also an electrical engineer who has done chip design. I really do understand the inner workings of a chip.
On the note of the fan. Make then quieter. I believe I read a
We also live in a disposable society. DIsposable cars, chips, and everything else. They make things to not last long so you have to buy new ones. That's business. Going for longer lasting items is literally a foreign concept.
Evolution or ID?
Smaller fan sounding less than a big fan is all relative. To move the same amount of air in a given time, the small fan needs a far higher rpm, which increases noise.
"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.
This means the end of desktop CPUs in laptops.
Decent battery life in a cheap laptop? Nah, they'll cut down on the batteries instead.
It's never too late to have a happy childhood.
A lot of people have electrical heaters. Why not replace the heating elements with processors which are designed to be able to run at a very hot temperature? Imagine the processing power if every heater actually was a cluster of 20 pentium4 processors! And all these machines are networked. This could be expanded to every heat producing machine. Just imagine you toaster, boiler, hair-dryer are a beowulf cluster calculating seti@home packages - a geek's heaven. It could also be useful for companies who need that processing power to lend this for little money.
Open Source Alternatives
Then you obviously haven't used anything from them recently. Seriously dude, AMDs current crop (Barton XP and Athlon64) are kick ass chips, and the boards are stable.
Don't blame AMD for the chipset companies provided half-assed chipsets that predominantly sucked. That's pretty much been fixed, and what do you know, AMD's king of the performance hill.
But to answer your direct question:
No, a 2GHz Dothan will -NOT- be able to compete with a 3.6GHz Prescott. But then, you might be able to aircool dothan, or use a lightweight fan if you can't, and you're borderline needing a water-cooler for the highest end prescotts.
Seriously, if it's as good as everyone says, and the architechture is better, and it runs smoother, and faster, what would be the downturn of this move?
(No AMD suggestions please. I've never found them to be as stable as Intel CPUs ).
Then you must be doing something wrong. I've used both Intel and AMD CPU's and have never had a problem with stability on the hardware side of things. In fact, my current AMD system has been up and running since I switched it back on after spring break. According to my command line: "\\SHODAN has been up for: 19 day(s), 11 hour(s), 12 minute(s), 8 second(s)" -- WinXP Pro on an AMD processor. Completely stable. To be fair, I've never had an issue with Intel chips either. I have a 733mhz P3 that's still going strong after 4 years (not total uptime, but its still stable nonetheless).
"So after all this, you make my case for me. To end this stalemate, you must die..."
So either it's a miscommunication on Intel's side, or the news are false...
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
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?
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
"(No AMD suggestions please. I've never found them to be as stable as Intel CPUs )."
You're probably coupling them with some other sub-par parts then. The processors themselves are fine. Are you using cheap RAM? A cheap PSU? A cheap motherboard? All of those things make a huge difference in stability.
hey!
yeah or at least very close considering I have seen benchmarks that put a 1.6 ghz pentium M in aboout the same performance arena as a 2.4 ghz pentium 4 so maybe a little lower. but the new one comes with or so they say 64bit extensions. as well as an increased ipc or so I would imagine then the fact of the matter is their will be dual and quad core chips available so yeah it probably will compete plus burn less juice
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.
"... but you can love completely without complete understanding." - Norman Maclean, "A River Runs Through It"
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.
"Sometimes, I think Trent just needs a cup of hot chocolate and a blankie." -Tori Amos on Nine Inch Nails
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.
These two basic tagets seem to be a good idea;
A firewall can not protect you from yourself. Turn off what you do not need. Do not use the firewall to do your work.
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...
Is that all?
Still, process shrinks in the past have yielded easy speed increases, but not this time around. Intel's move seems to confirm that there might be trouble ahead.
It looks like the folks at IBM also have concerns:
"Somewhere between 130-nm and 90-nm the whole system fell apart. Things stopped working and nobody seemed to notice."
Let me tear down a few things on YOUR post:
Longer battery life on laptops:
It does mean lower power consumption on desktops too - lower power bill.
Silent PCs:
While the fan is loud, the lower heat of the P-M makes it easier to get rid of the fan.
Longer lifetime of the processor:
Hmm, the PMMX only puts out ~10W, right (my P233MMX has a heatsink w/fan, but could easily be passively cooled)? Well, the P4 puts out between 80 and 103W. The P-M consumes ~23W - which puts the power consumption MUCH lower than the NetBurst CPUs.
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.
dinner: it's what's for beer
This should have been visible from a mile away. A month or so ago there was an article (on The Register I think) about Intel abandoning it's Mhz marketing in favor of a simple number system (for example, 5xx series for one processor line, 7xx series for another processor line). It was obvious to me at the time this was because they would be dumping the current P-4 and going with the P-M. Why else would you remove Mhz from the equation?
Bock...Bock...Bock... Peck.... Peck.... Peck.... [Crowing] So what did your calculations prove.
Yeah, that should be the another nail in Intel's coffin.
Oops, I didn't mean to type that last bit out loud!
--- Ban humanity.
I think the latest kernel comes with a microcode patch that fixes the erroneous calculation of your non-existence. But you still get nice framerates on the proto-fowl...;-|
Smaller fan sounding less than a big fan is all relative. To move the same amount of air in a given time, the small fan needs a far higher rpm, which increases noise.
That's not the point -- it's not about necessarily literally physically smaller, but smaller-in-power. Which really *is* less noisy.
...with a cooler processor (a given volume of air can remove a given quantity of heat, so if you have less heat, you need to push less air to remove it). your smaller fan can spin at a lower RPM, hence it's quieter.
Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored. - Aldous Huxley
it's a bout freakin' time; i was curious what the power needs of a G4 proc were as compared to a P4, so i went hunting - my entire dual 1.25ghz G4 box sucks down 113 watts, while a single 3.2ghz P4 wants ~115W IIRC...that's just re-freakin-diculous!
Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored. - Aldous Huxley
my ex-co-worker who was a major Intel biggot and thought that the Tejas was going to be the best thing ever. Yeah, best thing ever for frying eggs on your PC case.
Damien
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).
Chalk it up as yet another product whose fourth version was bloated and disappointing.
Think DOS 4, Netscape 4, IE 4... any others?
Interesting how Windows skipped version 4...
that say this is a great idea. I'm personally not so sure. They havent got the core beyond 1.7 ghz. Why? This is a P6 core cpu! Thats right, pentium pro, pentium 2, pentium 3, etc. They added some features, new stepping and thats it.
This has also been mentioned, but what I'm saying is, I have NO idea how they will get any kind of clockspeed out of this thing. It's been tooth and nail to try to get it to run where it is even. They can drop the process size to get more speed out of it, but that only takes you so far. You will have to lenghten the pipeline eventually which carries with it all the problems of the P4.
I just honestly cant see them taking the P6 core any further. I'm suprised they can even do what they do with it.
I also doubt they will drop the Pentium 4 core while they still have a lead on the athlons performance wise. P4 is a core they spent a LOT of time and money developing. I doubt they will just drop it.
Also, in the article, they say that intel will be tearing up their roadmaps and they SPECULATE Pentium-M will be the replacement. Might be a modified Pentium 4, or maybe a Pentium4-PentiumM mix.
Just my 2c.
It's easier to fight for one's principles than to live up to them.
That's the problem with being in tech-support. We can always breath new life into old hardware, there-by not giving us the excuse to ask for new hardware.
I have a P4 machine on every floor in my house Just when I was about to cancel my Natural Gas service, the go and try to Lower the heat output of chips.
Windows NT 4.0 was released in 1996. Eight years later, it is still supported by Microsoft for security fixes, bug fixes, and moderate enhancements. NT 4.0 is still a powerful, light-weight operating system that can run even some of the newest technologies Microsoft is churning out, like the
Ayup
It's like a hat for it, right? So it looks stylish. Otherwise the RAM will laugh at it...
You missed the point.
The grandparent is saying that a smaller fan would be fine due to lower processor heat. Thus the fan would not have to move as much air.
(Karma = auto -1)
Some rebuttals.
I use a desktop, I don't care about my battery life there.
No, you care about your power bill and your circuit breaker. (And, FWIW, LCDs or other large-watt power savers are more important than processors at the moment...)
It's the fan in my pc that's loud not the processor. even small fans make noise.
You only need a fan in your PC because of your too-hot processor. My first two computers didn't have any fan outside of the power supply.
I still have a couple Pentium I with MMX running and without a hitch. How much longer are you talking about?
About that long. CPUs didn't start to get Too Hot until after the Pentium I.
Intel used to stamp the iCOMP index on their processors so that people could compare the Intel benchmark of performance of the 80486 with the Pentium. Intel touted the slower Pentium 60 as being faster than the 80486-66 which was true. However, the stamp was nice and small - and was not a major advertising point. Intel dropped it, I believe, during the latter portion of the regular Pentium era.
AMD's rating gives me a good idea of X processor is slower than Y processor and the difference in cost is N. If the companies switch to something, hopefully they will KISS to maximize what it is intended to do - show the basic improvement of one processor over another.
Ayup
Not smaller fans, slower fans. A smaller fan runnign the same RPM as a large fan will move less aire with the same amount of noise, a large fan can move the same amount of air at much smaller RPMs than the small fan, and in doing so generate less noise. My case has 1 120mm fan and 1 92mm fan, it probably pushes the same amount of air as my friends setup which has 4 80mm case fans, but with substantially less noise.
"Sic Semper Tyrannosaurus Rex."
It seems that there are a few here who don't think of things like the MB! It uses power too! And so does the Video Card, HDs, and memory.
In fact, I'd bet that the CPU is only about 20-30% of the power consumed in a system. Generally, systems with higher speed CPUs (hence more power), generally have the higher power graphics and HDs.
So while you Macaddicts may be absolutely correct about the CPU powers, it isn't the whole story. That's why I buy AMD!
No, I don't trust in god. He'll have to pay up front, like everybody else.
But that's excusable. The 386s[u]x deserves to be forgotten. However, as others have mentioned, the 186 was actually quite successful in embedded applications.
"The good reader is a rarer swan than the good writer."
Hardly. That'd only be relevant for part of geek population, or Apple loyalists, because:
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.
I like paying taxes. With them I buy civilization -- Oliver Wendell Holmes
I was trying to avoid getting into things like subthreshold leakage current (to explain why Vdd can't be reduced arbitrarily).
That's what I get for posting ten minutes after I wake up I guess.
Smaller fans = less noise.
Riiiggghhhtt.
Small fans, because of their size, push very little air. In order to push any appreciable amount of air volume, they usually run 5-7,000 RPM. A fan, no matter it's size, makes a lot of noise at anything higher than 2-3,000 RPM. (Think of a car that can do 120mph. Driving it at 50mph will be much quieter than driving it at 125mph.)
Bigger fans can push much more air volume, and can run anywhere from 500 to 5,000 rpm. Once again, anything over 2-3,000rpm make a lot of noise, and the lower you go, the less.
A 120mm fan spinning at 500 RPM will push a lot more air than a 40mm fan running at 7,000 RPM, while at the same time being a lot quieter!
Don't steal. The government hates competition.
The execs are afraid that they'll be lured mindlessly away into secret underwater tunnels and communicate through hot sex.
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
This is total tin-foil-hat speculation, but hear me out:
Considering the enormous amount of resources Microsoft is going to have to keep pouring into Windows development, I can't imagine they are going to want to keep spending the $$$ on maintaining multiple versions for various CPU types, now down to basically two: x86 and Itanium. They saw that NT on Mips, PowerPC and that NEC chip (forget what it's called) were lousy sellers, and you've got to imagine that though NT on the Alpha was probably going to be a big seller, the implosion of DEC pretty much put the lid on its future and Microsoft decided quickly it wasn't going to be spending the time and resources to keep up an Alpha port, no matter how good it probably was.
Even though Intel says otherwise, you have to think that they see the Itanium as not the future for Windows; people don't really trust Windows to operate well on the x86, why should they think it'll run better on the Itanium? I predict that the server version of Longhorn will be an x86-only product (of course, probably *requiring* 2 or more of those as-yet produced multi-core cpus).
So let's presume that Windows won't run on the Itanium in the future. What's left? Solaris, AIX, or Irix on the Itanum? Nope (3rd paragraph) That leaves only one OS that already runs on the chip, our friend the penguin.
So what will Intel do with it? Seems like the future points to a processor that runs Linux (probably NetBSD too) and little else. If Intel doesn't can the thing altogether (which is unlikely given the huge resources spent, and the serious black eye it would give them), then presumably we would have a cpu to call our own: a machine built with nothing but Linux in mind. Combine this hardware with all the software that's a little more than a recompile away, and you'd have a pretty sweet setup to counter the Windows juggernaut.
I have to wonder if Israel is a good location to have Intel's design shop, given the continuing violence between the Israelis and Palestinians. It'd suck a P-M designer or two was killed in an attack. :-(
Hail Eris, full of mischief...
E pluribus sanguinem
intel started to introduce model numbers to their processors instead of the actual mhz count. this may be the reason to it.
Live your life each day as if it was your last.
Despite what all you teenaged know-it-alls post, Intel isn't stupid. AMD is a very good competitor, and the shuffle of smart people between these two companies has been going on for decades. Intel is huge, it can afford to explore all possible paths. AMD cannot. In fact, no other semiconductor company on earth has the resources to push the limits of design as rapidly as Intel does. Yes, an IBM lab can demonstrate a technology on a test chip, but IBM won't collapse if it can't bring it to market, Intel will.
By having multiple, very different designs cooking at the same time, Intel has wisely used its resources to compete in a rapidly changing market.
I doubt anyone on this board (save a few) could make intelligent decisions with a $40 billion dollar company without 20/20 hindsight.
https://www.accountkiller.com/removal-requested
Actually, the reason it took THIS friggin long to come to this decision was the resistance on the part of Intel in the US to fully accept the design of this chip by Intel in Israel. Apparently, there was quite a bit of "not invented here" mindset on the part of the US Intel folks, even though it was still Intel that created the Pentium M... just in Israel.
I can't find any info regarding this online at the moment, but I did get this information from a reliable source. Anyone else read this?
Portable versions of Firefox, GIMP, LibreOffice, etc
Well, they'd better hope that BMW doesn't decide to sue 'em for using their numbering scheme...
;-)
You don't use science to show that you're right, you use science to become right.
Does the Pentium M support Hyperthreading, or something new and better?
AMD will be too busy reworking all of its model numbers.
All about me
Multicore chips avoid many of the problems involved in trying to increase raw, single-processor MHz. Simply put, a good dual-core system will whip the pants of a single-processor system, even if the MHz is the same between the two systems. However...
The potential of multicore and SMP systems is largely predicated on training programmers in parallelism, the availability of tools, and the willingness of software companies to invest in parallel software development.
All about me
Problem? What problem? Marketing and modern media have ensured that the average person's attention span is no more than 5 seconds.
Besides, imagine the spin: "We continue to Innovate into the 21st century."
You don't even need to mention MHz, pipeline, or any of yesterday's lingo...get with it baby!
So that's why all those light fetishists take the time to fill their fans with LEDs.
Actually now that Apple and AMD have successfully?/vigorously argued against the MHz myth, Intel can simply ride on customers' nascent acceptance of performance numbers.
Compared to the incongruous numbering schemes between most consumer electronics, and especially car models, customers will likely accept a marketed performance scheme and forget about any meaning behind the raw numbers.
1 processor with 2 cores at 2MHz each = 4MHz chip.
Size also makes a difference. It's the speed of the tips of the blades that makes the difference. If you have two fans running at the same RPM then the tips of the bigger fan are going to be moving faster then the smaller fan - hence, making more noise.
But the general tone of your statement is correct. It is generally better to go with a slower, bigger fan then a smaller, faster fan.
Esp. since BMW has also used the M1, M3, M5 names for their top sports models
"When I first heard Daydream Nation it quite frankly scared the living shit out of me." -- Matthew Stearns
Wow, Dothan is a strange choice for the name of a processor. No offense intended to those who are condemned to live there, but Dothan, Alabama is by a wide margin the goddamned ugliest, most depressing industrial pit of hell in the entire South. It might be the ugliest town in the entire country, but for the existence of Cheyenne, Wyoming, which is appallingly unpleasant to look at even on a moonless night during a power outage.
Proud member of the Weirdo-American community.
No problem, Intel will now adopt the "PR" rating system, all part numbers will be estimated comparable speed to P4 chips at speeds that never existed :)
Amen to that. My previous machine was a t-bird 900 on an above average MB. Slightly unstable until I finally threw money at the problem and bought a big-ass, high quality power supply to replace what Enlight tossed in for free with the case. Zero problems after doing that.
This time I started out with a nice heavy, well ventilated case with a beefy p/s filled with another high quality MB, name brand RAM and an Athlon64. I have been running a lot of test builds of whiteboxlinux on this puppy to stress it before building a final x86_64 release and the temp rises a bit after 20+ hours of straight compiling, but it has run rock solid.
Moral of the story, don't buy AMD to save money and expect a system as stable as a quality Intel box. Buy AMD as part of a quality system and it won't be the weak link.
Democrat delenda est
DMV == Department of Motor Vehicles, where you go to get a license to drive or a registration for your car. This is not a universal term.
I used to live in California, and I've spent a few hours standing in queues at the DMV.
In Washington state, where I live now, we don't have the DMV, we have the DOL (Department of Licensing).
I remember seeing a TV movie, made in California of course but supposedly taking place in Seattle, where someone said "I need to go to the DMV" and the other characters understood. It made me wonder how many places use the "DMV" acronym; if you live in e.g. England, do you say "DMV"? How many states in the US use this term? And does the fact that Hollywood uses the term in movies and TV shows mean that everyone understands it now?
steveha
lf(1): it's like ls(1) but sorts filenames by extension, tersely
That would be pretty cool, and it would have the benefit of making multi-core things more mainstream. This creates more of an incentive for software developers to write things that can take advantage of multiple threads. And that can only be a good thing!
Karma: pi (Mostly due to circular reasoning in posts).
Concur. I've been using AMD for years, and my computers are stable. I buy good motherboards, good RAM, and good cooling solutions.
The worst thing about the Athlon XP is how easy it is to kill the chip by putting on a heat sink incorrectly. AMD has learned its lesson, and the newest chips (Athlon 64, Opteron) have a metal heat spreader protecting the actual chip. (That's one thing Intel did right with the Pentium 4 and it's about time AMD did it too.) The newest AMD chips are better than the Intel counterpart chips in every way, including price.
steveha
lf(1): it's like ls(1) but sorts filenames by extension, tersely
Intel is an excellent offering for their continued development on their processor families. AMD is showing that even though they don't have the cycles-per-second title, they can produce extremely fast processors at an affordable price. It's another example of capitalism at work. AMD is a force to be reckoned with the industry, and AMD will do what it needs to continue their R&D and profitability.
I agree with you that Intel is the standard because, frankly, they've earned it. While many companies have come and gone to create an x86 compatible chip - Intel has constantly provided satisfactory desktop performance not only through their CPUs but also their motherboard chipsets. It is up to their major competitor, AMD, to aggressively market their product with major computer manufacturers to get their product into the hands of consumers through support contracts, incentives (price reduction in quantity, etc.), and by provided a superior product than Intel's family of processors.
Ayup
I work for a big semiconductor companie. For our 120nm process we have core voltages of 1.2V. For the 90nm you have a choice, either 1.0V or 1.2V depending how much static leakage you are willing to take.
The max voltage depends on your oxide thickness in your transistor. So you want high speed take the thinner gate oxide, but you will have more static leakage. You want to be even faster, lower the treshold voltage, but you will get more leakage.
Far the fast process option the gate, in a 90nm process, will be more like 65nm. Even more leakage.
All this together will already dissipate a few Watts and the chip is not doing anything yet.
When you want to go real low power, for example for your cell phone, make the gate 90nm, take the thicker gate oxide, increase the threshold voltages, and most important: do not run at high clock frequencies when not needed and you battery will last many hours.
HP 200LX technical details
We might actually get a processor that doesn't take down the National Grid.
Smaller fans = less noise.
Actually, that's not true. Bigger fans move more air per rotation and so spin slower, thus making less noise.
Also, when big fans spin fast, they tend to make a less annoying noise than small fans with their high-pitched whine.
Treehugger? Treehugger... Treehugger!
The AC post above this comment (now at -1) is so typical. Something terrible happens in technology, and, instead of talking about the technology, technically knowledgeable being attacking each other!
The parent post is exactly right: "I'm an EE in Microelectronics, and I had been very disappointed in Intel's tricks to get MHz up."
Intel agrees! The whole point of abandoning the Pentium 4 is that Intel is dissapointed, also. Certainly the engineers at Intel did not know it would happen this way.
The Inquirer article says the same thing: "The heat dissipation/power consumption problems the company has had with the first 90nm desktop Pentium 4, 'Prescott', may well have convinced it that if it's to bring multi-core CPUs to market, its needs to completely rethink the architecture of those cores."
Not very long ago, AMD had 8 to 10 percent of the desktop market, now the share is closer to 50 percent.
Intel has not been doing well. I've had extensive conversations with people who work for Intel, including people who help design Intel microprocessors. In my opinion, it seems that Intel is suffering from years of bad management. Intel has been a company that treated its employees badly, and now the entire company is suffering.
The self-destruction of Intel seems to me to be related to the self-destruction of other U.S. companies, like Enron and WorldCom and the Tyco . It is my understanding that the self-destruction of these companies is related to a general social breakdown that is happening in the United States. I've written a draft of an article about the problems: Social Breakdown in the United States. (This is only the May 7, 2004, 12:46, draft version.)
small vs. large fans
Some aftermarket vendor should start making replacement side doors that are equipped with big (150mm?), slow intake fans for cases. With an easily-replaceable/washable filter. Or is that a dumb idea?
Nope, it makes the Internet faster too!
--
"Outlook not so good." That magic 8-ball knows everything! I'll ask about Exchange Server next.
Its not a bad idea, but most people who own dells/compaqs/hps would never buy one and would proably ever need more than stock cooling (i say most, i do have a compaq with a aftermarket video card and a second HD, but i threw in a casefan...). Those of us that build our own PCs know enough (ussually) to properly cool our rig.
"Sic Semper Tyrannosaurus Rex."
Just had some more thoughts, even if PCs shipped with this people wouldn't clean the filter ever. I've opened peoples cases and found dust bunnies larger than my fist inside. Also, just FYI, the biggest of the big PC fans are 120mm, 80mm is "standard" and 92mm and 40mm are the only other sizes i've ever seen for sale anywhere. Hmm, guess it is a dumb idea, sorry...
"Sic Semper Tyrannosaurus Rex."
Yeah, it would have to be for non-mainstream users, but then there seems to be a market for other add-ons and gadgets. The most useful features would be the easy-to-clean filter (assuming the case would be overpressurized by the large fan) and relative ease of installation.
We have post overlap.
I suggest that the reason that peoples' case interiors are that dustbunnyish is *because* it is so troublesome for them to get inside and clean it out (scared of breaking something, sharp edges, etc.). Do most case fans come equipped with filters? Are most case fans even easily accessible? Most I've seen are located down low behind the front facia.
Most dell/compaq/hp cases do not come with filters, and most just come with exhaust fans and vents in the bezel or sidepanel.
"Sic Semper Tyrannosaurus Rex."
There is a market for add-ons. Although most people who install fans in adition to where there are brackets/screw holes in their case can install one anywhere. Its really not difficult to cut a fanhole in the side of your case or a blowhole in the top.
"Sic Semper Tyrannosaurus Rex."
Actually, I believe I read that Intel cleared it with BMW, believe it or not.
Source on this
Quoted here:
Make a 64-bit challenger to Athlon64.
You mean like EMT64 that was already announced?
Enable SMP on something faster than Tualatin.
You mean like the 3.2 GHz Xeon that's already shipping?
Thanks for your insight. I do wonder about your "...not difficult to cut a fanhole..." comment.
The market I'm thinking about is somewhere between tinkering handyman, Dremel-owning computer geeks and your average home computer user.
Then again, nobody cares that much to spend an extra $50 for easy (physical) maintenance when buying a new PC.
>Ever wonder about the reason why the fan is sitting there right on top of the processor?
It's like a hat for it, right? So it looks stylish. Otherwise the RAM will laugh at it...
yeah, it's like a beanie with a propeller- since the processor is the "brains" of the computer, it's kind of the nerd of the bunch...
Long live the pentium.
You can also find 170mm fans designed to run on 12 Volts.
Well, regardless of your desire to nitpick I'm enthusiastic about this change in Intel's roadmap. I like what I've read about the Pentium-M's design so much that I'd consider a desktop built around it right now. It's possible to build a motherboard for it with the E7205 chipset. If someone could hack smp support (perhaps with socket adaptor?) I've got no doubt the results would seriously rock.
Woah, you forgot marketing 101: never, ever make people feel stupid or as though they made a stupid decision. :) Not to say your other points aren't valid, but that's the big one.
Say its new and revolutionary, and that this is why it is this way now, and sure some people will be able to read between the lines... but that's fine. Let them save face. But when joe average has made a decision based on GHz, and you essentially call him stupid and bring his ignorance to light, you are not going to get the reaction you hoped for. Even if it makes you feel good.
30% less power and if it has centrino technology, we can clutter the airwaves with microcode at the same time..
Just say no to license servers!!
Let's assume that you don't 100% require mobility out of your system (which currently is the only reason people buy laptops, aside from PHB's that believe a higher price tag means a better system).
Desktops are more powerful than laptops. Aside from some lan gamers who again desire portability over power, this makes desktops the computer to use. Go look at a big LAN party. There will be more people bringing desktops than laptops. Gamers, therefore, are definately people who'll stick with the desktop (or erode away to the console). Gamers shouldn't be confused with hobbyists, either. Hobbyists are the ones who cool CPU's with fluid nitrogen gas and move thier systems only on pain of death. Gamers are a much larger proportion of the marketplace.
Desktops are cheaper than laptops. They will be for a long time to come, too. Laptops carry additional costs over PC's, namely they contain all the components a PC does, but they're smaller and miniturisation costs extra. Laptops also contain components that desktops don't need, like PCMCIA cards and batteries and LCD monitors.
I find it difficult to believe that any time in the near future people will decide to pay more money for less powerful computers.
With wireless internet everywhere, there are more and more reasons most businesses, (you know, all the people who buy computers that aren't gamers or mac users), aren't touching wireless technologies. The security risks are insane, and the costs of securing the networks to mitigate those risks are even more insane. Companies will not dump 100MBit CAT5 networks for 54MBit wireless networks (at least none of the companies I've had contact with, and that's quite a few).
I am government man, come from the government. The government has sent me. -- G.I.R.