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Intel Releases New Pentium M Processors

Posted by timothy on from the leapfrog dept.

doormat writes "Its been known for a while, but now it's official, as Intel releases Dothan, the 90nm version of Banias, aka the Pentium M processor. It also debuts Intel's new numbering scheme. The fastest new part is a Pentium M 755 2GHz w/ a 100MHz FSB, and 2MB of L2 on die cache. Reviews are starting to tip up as the NDA expires. One is at Tom's."

11 of 190 comments (clear)

  1. Don't BMW on-board computers use PowerPCs? by michaeldot · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Motorola embedded PowerPCs power those German luxury cars don't they?

    Just a tad ironic.

    1. Re:Don't BMW on-board computers use PowerPCs? by dnoyeb · · Score: 2, Interesting

      As an automotive supplier, we use lots of motorola CPUs in cars, but not quite to the power PC level. HC08 and the like. Automotive manufacturers are excessively cheap and will not pay for such a thing. Not to mention its power is wasted.

      One thing to note about the new intel numbering scheme is it directly removes revelance from AMD's numbering scheme. Intel is adding a meaningless first number as if to say "the first number is just for our purposes, you pay attemtion to the MHz." If people buy into that, it will kill AMDs scheme as people look for the MHz on the AMD chip instead of assuming its equivalent number has any value. Interesting.

  2. What I don't understand... by drsmithy · · Score: 4, Interesting

    ...Is why more hardware vendors aren't using these CPUs in Blade configs. They seem perfect for high density computing power.

  3. Re:FSB @ 100 MHz ? by stephenry · · Score: 4, Interesting

    The large cache is probably more likely used to lower the power consumption of the processor. It's far cheaper (in terms of power) to drive short chip level wires to get commonly used data from a cache than it is to drive long, high capacitance, board level wires to memory.

  4. Dothan / Banias Compatibility by NeGz · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I don't suppose anyone knows if it the new Dothan CPUs are compatible with existing Banias notebooks at all? I very much doubt it, but I've not seen it expressly said thus far. It would be nice to be able to upgrade my ~3 month old 1.5ghz Banias to a Dothan, heh.

    Also, if they are not compatible, is Intel planning to take the Banias chips further, or will I be stuck at 1.7ghz max (or is it 2.2ghz?) until I buy a new one?

    Excuse me for being a little ignorant. :)

  5. Re:So The Bottom Line Is... by klui · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Not sure how to read the comparison table between Banias and Dothan.

    Peak thermal power is 24.5W for Banias and 21W for Dothan. But it looks like average thermal power is 6W for Banias vs. 7.5W. Sleep power, deep sleep power, and deeper sleep power are all higher for Dothan.

    Does this mean if you're not doing a lot of number crunching, your battery life will be less than a Banias system? Maybe the cache has something to do with this... whatever. I would be more impressed if the power requirements were lower across the board. And the lower peak doesn't seem that low. What's the best case thermal advantage going from 130nm to 90nm of an identical circuit?

  6. I'm going to miss the good old days of MHz by otter42 · · Score: 4, Interesting
    Yes, I know that MHz were somewhat misleading, but come on, they weren't that bad after all. While it was never true that a Pentium 3GHz was twice as fast as a Pentium 1.5GHz, it was nonetheless faster. And Intel's dominance forced AMD to give similar numbers (rounded up for inflation, of course) that helped us all compare.

    Now I have to wonder which new chips are faster. To (blatantly) steal from an earlier post:

    Will the Pentium 5 X159-XL-SE be more power full than a Pentium 5 X150-Pro-Ultra ? Or less powerfull than a X160-LE ? Does it compare to an Athlon 64 Dual FX-95e 4699+++ ?


    I hate the "consumer electronics" style of naming things, incrementing a model number in order to sell an inferior product. Who here honestly thinks that Intel won't do exactly this when they release a product that bombs? I still remember the to-do when Tom's Hardware published a pre-release review of the Pentium II, showing that it was inferior to a Pentium MMX of the same clock speed.

    What I would REALLY like to se is AMD seize the MHz banner now that Intel has abandonned it. I mean, now AMD doesn't have to give performance "numbers" to convince people to buy it. They could go back to simple MHz ratings, forcing Intel to keep itself honest. After all, we all know that the whole reason we all hated the MHz rating was because AMD had superior performance at inferior speeds and it just wasn't fair. I don't remember too many people complaining when AMD went back to MHz specs with the Athlons. Here's hoping to see it again soon.
    --
    www.eissq.com/BandP.html Ball and Plate System. Amuse your friends. Crush your enemies.
  7. Re:Desktop by BenjyD · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Let's see:
    Intel Pentium-M 735 $294,21W
    Comparable Athlon-XP (2600-3000?) $170, ~70W

    Price difference = ~$120
    Power difference=~50W

    Electricity cost (UK prices, don't know any others)=$0.10/Kwh

    Time to break even=~2.7 years

    Which is about the lifetime of a processor, I guess. Of course, that's assuming you use both at 100% CPU constantly for three years.

  8. Re:Intel fanboys around the world do a 180... by hahn · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Actually...
    Didn't Cyrix first utilize this 'performance-rating' style of rating the chips back in 1995 with their 6X86 chip?

    History of Cyrix

    --
    "The only normal people are the ones you don't know very well."
  9. Re:So The Bottom Line Is... by mczak · · Score: 4, Interesting
    Does this mean if you're not doing a lot of number crunching, your battery life will be less than a Banias system?
    Yes. However, the difference is rather small (keep in mind the cpu is not the only thing drawing power, so that 1.5W difference is really not that much).
    Maybe the cache has something to do with this... whatever. I would be more impressed if the power requirements were lower across the board. And the lower peak doesn't seem that low.
    No, it's not because of the cache (actually, banias/dothan have neat tricks to reduce power draw of the cache). It's a direct result of 90nm vs. 130nm. Peak power draw goes down, because of the lower voltage needed for switching in the transistors. But idle current goes up, because if you reduce structure size, you get more and more leakage current (which, btw, is a huge problem nowadays - leakage current was basically 0 just a short while ago, but it goes up exponentially with smaller structures).
  10. Digital Restrictions Management in Dothan by Adam+J.+Richter · · Score: 4, Interesting
    From The Register:
    The dark side of Dothan also reared its head, briefly. When asked why Intel was introducing a new naming scheme for Centrino, Chandrasekhar replied that the numbers represented more of "goodness measure" and reflected features that were not necessarily "performance enhancing", such as Le Grande. Le Grande is Intel's contribution to TCPA-compliant lock-down computing,and allows large media companies to impair the user's ability to exchange media files, such as their favorite songs. So you can see why Le Grande isn't "performance enhancing", and quite the reverse. [...]

    Here is a link about TCPA as a threat to free software.

    Slowing TCPA adoption is enough of an benefit to me to prefer a TCPA-free processor even if it costs $50 more for the same performance. I just hope I'll have that option for a while, as Intel is not the only company promoting TCPA.