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Intel Delays Release of 4Ghz Chips
bizpile writes "The AP is reporting that Intel's faster version of the Pentium 4 will not be available by the end of the year as previously promised. They told PC makers this week that the 4-gigahertz chip will not ship until the first quarter of 2005. Intel spokeswoman Laura Anderson said, 'We felt by adjusting the schedule for the products, we could better meet our customers' volume requirements and their high expectations.'"
"We felt by adjusting the schedule for the products, we could better meet our customers' volume requirements and their high expectations," said Intel spokeswoman Laura Anderson on Friday. She declined to elaborate on the reason for the delay.
When I first read the headline, I thought it may have done something with Intel not being confident enough for a release this year. But now, it sounds like a similar strategy compared to the new iMacs to me, where they delayed them to clear out the existing inventory.
It would be cool if it didn't suck.
isn't it though?
amazingly enough, drunk people have some good insight. Because they throow away all the BS and just give you the stgraight truth!
If what they say is true, then we're looking at a case of "ship crap now and get hammered" vs. "get hammered for being late."
:)
Probably shouldn't have announced it early, but the pressure was probably pretty heavy.
I mean, look at Doom3 vs. HL2. Valve announced a date early and got hashed when they couldn't meet it. ID said "when it's ready." Looks like the wait time will be close to the same, but I don't see a lot of posts from people claiming ID is lying about how close they are...
Oh... back to the topic clready? Oh, OK.
Clock speed really doesn't matter, anyway. Well, it's not as important a benchmark as Intel would have you think.
If a processor running at 4ghz can only do half the operations per clock cycle that a 2ghz processor can do, than it's no better than the 2ghz processor, and probably worse due to larger instruction pipelines, etc.
The fact that Intel has relied on this "Mhz Myth" has really killed sales of their Centrino (Pentium M) line of processors. Consumers see the (comparatively low) ghz ratings on the Centrinos (typically about 1.5ghz) and compare them to laptops with less expensive P4's (typically running between 2.5 to 3.5ghz) and wonder why anyone would pick the Centrinos.
Laura Anderson said, 'We felt by adjusting the schedule for the products, we could better meet our customers' volume requirements and their high expectations.
Suit to Geek Translation.
"We can maximize the profit we make off of our existing inventory by delaying the release of the new chips until we sell off the current stock."
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
I beleive they are adding in the amd-64 extensions.. however, I think the problem may well be a production issue with stability, and heat in mind.. the 3.4ghz+ p4's seem to be doing a lot of throttling, or however it is they slow down to prevent heat issues... I think solutions similar to the heat-pipe in the shuttle xpc's will help a lot, but not sure where it is all going at this point.
Michael J. Ryan - tracker1.info
Well, it looks nobody, including Intel and IBM, had any idea how difficult moving to the 90nm process would be. What about 60nm? I think Moore's Law has finally run out of steam.
Back in 2000 when Intel was first surpassed by AMD when they were beaten to 1 Ghz, they rushed an overclocked 1.13 Ghz chip to market that eventually ended up being recalled. I suspect that the reason that the 4 Ghz chip is not yet being released may, in fact, have something to do with reliability. Also it is important to remember that this chip is running on the Prescott core, which will probably use over a hundred watts of power alone. Perhaps they need more time to explore better cooling solutions (that can be delivered cheaply) before rushing a potentially unreliable product to market.
I am in favor of reliable chips (although personally being an AMD zealot myself); I think that the competition between AMD and Intel is important for innovation and fair prices.
The x86 world's delays in ramping up speed have gotten to be so great that they're almost starting to be as bad as the Mac world's...
Sparc, x86 and PPC all seem to be kind of floundering at the moment. Does this indicate some kind of problem with the further fulfillment of Moore's law (you know, for once, Moore's law failing to apply NOW as opposed to "Moore's law will stop working in 8 months) or has this just been a bad year?
P.S. This new "IT" scheme is hideously unattractive by every single concievable method of measurement.
Noo...
Translation = "suppliers have too much inventory, we need to delay past Christmas buying frenzy or they'll be angry."
Here I am, now where is the sacrifice.
I have read rumors that soon Intel will switch their main desktop processors over to a design similar to that of Pentium-M, which is currently much more efficient per a clock than Pentium IVs. If this is true, they would definetly have to go back on their "Ghz are so important" campaign. Personally, I rather have effiecient processors than ones that are power hungry and give off lots of heat.
SIGFAULT
Rating systems are annoying. Imagine if Ford advertised the next Mustang as a 300+, because thinner tires and less weight gave it the performance of a car with 40 more HP.
Clock speed is the best first-order approximation of a chip's performance. It is true that the Pentium 4 is less efficient, but it's not like we're talking about an order of magnitude. At worst, we're talking about a 2 GHz Athlon 64 competing with a 3 GHz Pentium 4, a difference of 50%.
Keeping in mind that AMD claims that its ratings are derived from previous Athlon models, the variety of Athlon 64 and Sempron models gives us an opportunity to benchmark the impact of clock speed (ranging from 1.8 GHz to 2.4 GHz), L2 cache (ranging from 256 KB to 1 MB), and memory bandwidth (single- v. dual-channel). Doubling the cache or bandwidth is usually worth less than a 10% increase in clock speed.
I think that Intel's NetBurst gamble was, in large part, a marketing ploy. I also think that it was successful. However, it was an expensive ploy, from which Intel appears to be retreating. If it takes a billion dollars to temporarily skew clock speed by 50%, I'd say it's holding up pretty well.
If this went on long enough and if we truly are at the end of straight line scaling, the industry might become driven by the one-more-GHz per year rule (the new More Law), versus doubling every 18 months. This new law could then hold for decades as it slowly curves down towards a flat line. I don't actually predict this will be the model soon, as the old Moore's Law is more likely to adhered to, but in 24 and then 36 month time frames for as long as possible. Still, if scaling is dead (and some are saying it is) then we could see the new "More Law" adopted as IT shops and Manufactures try to plan for future purchases. Software providers wouldn't be able to count on Moore's Law bailing them out. Bad news for Longhorn if scaling is dead, it might always be perceived of as slow (if /. reports are to be believed).
We are already putting 200+ million transistors on CPUs, but most speed increases come from scaling (speed increases) and memory caching. Now is the time for the industry to go Multi-Core. How about 100 two-million-transistor cores on a chip instead, with 500 separate integer and floating cores that can be shared across cores as needed.
BTW, I do know the real Moore's Law is about the number of transistors on a chip and not speed, but the two have been synonymous in the public's mind since the 80s.
Letter To Iran
Actually, now that functionality/performance is more important than MHz alone, perhaps Moore's law will finally regain its TRUE meaning. i.e. more SIMD instructions, multiple cores, better performance at same MHz by using more transistors.
Exactly! And the same situation on your precious Mac computer, too. Steve Jobs promised me last year a 3.0 GHz G5 by now!
Best Buy can have you arrested
i can't believe this!
I guess intel is just trying to make more money. They are trying to sell the slower chips at high prices, the 4 Ghz chips are probably gonna come out with todays price of 3.6 Ghz chips.
oh well, i just got a 3.0GHz P4, i'm not going to be buying a new computer any time soon, if anything i'm gonna be a low end laptop.
AMD already sells 3800 64bit processors!
Intel hasn't even developped a method to allow 32 bit apps to run on a 64 bit processor.
Intel is screwed, and it's screwing it's self!
I've been seeing a larger and larger number of AMD users. and i've only bought intel chips all my life, AMD looks tempting, i think next computer i might buy an AMD, unless Intel changes it's act.
plus i see more multiprocessor mobo's available for AMD than intel, i think intel only has them for their zeon processors.
AMD chips are:
faster
32 AND 64 bit
cheaper
AMD looks tempting to someone who has used intel chips their entire life.
however, i have friends who have had some real bad issues with AMD, thats why i didn't get one for my last computer.
hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm
So you suggest to keep a 4 GHz CPU cool by running it at 20% utilization constantly? Er... why not use a 1 GHz CPU at 80% utilization?
Because there are times where you want the full 4GHz performance. When you don't need it, don't use it.
No kidding, brainiac. Now tell us something we haven't already known for years.
AMD actually does a pretty good job of labelling their chips - in common apps, an amd 2800+ (for example) does pretty much on par with a P4 2800. There isn't exact parity, some apps fall one way, some fall another, and occasional special apps fall greatly one way or another - but on the whole, the PR ratings are pretty close.
steve
Oh, you're not stuck, you're just unable to let go of the onion rings.