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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.
"We felt by adjusting the schedule for the products, we could better meet our customers' volume requirements and their high expectations."
Translation = "full of bugs that cant be fixed in time"
Intel is still paying for their decision to go with the netburst architecture IMHO.
They wanted to be able to crank the megahurtz and use that as a PR device (well, not only that but it helped them).
Of course they are also having problem with the 90nm tech (as is IBM -- I think that only AMD has been mostly clear sailing with that), but most of their problems have come from netburst and lack of competitiveness in the budget sector (Celerons get killed by much faster and cheaper AMD chips).
Treehugger? Treehugger... Treehugger!
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
Mod me up if you hate the color scheme. Here's a fixed link using the "old" slashdot colors:
0 9&tid=118&tid=137&tid=126
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/07/30/22152
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
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.
Intel is now feeling some pain. They've built a brand around having more M/Ghz - which only matter superfically.
Being a multi-function device means that a CPU does multiple functions. As with ANY multi-function device, a model of CPU will do some things better than others.
X86 chips have traditionally been processing heavy, I/O weak, since hard, on-demand processing hsa been the driver of the X86 industry. (Video games, etc)
Contrast that with the Sun Sparc line of chips, or IBM's mainframe hardware, heavily optimized for I/O throughput. The needs of a rendering farm node are not well in alignment with the needs of a high-capacity file server.
Even within being "processing" demands, there is a wide, wide range. Floating point. Integer ops. Parallel proccessing. Different, even cross-compatible chips and chip lines will behave differently, performing better at some tasks than others.
But, for years now, Intel has been busy spending millions convincing the population that you can boil performance down to a single number, M/Ghz.
The cracks are beginning to show. AMD has made a solid business with "slower" (Mhz) ships that perform better. Their own Centrino line is "slower" but performs almost as well!
Intel needs to get a clue, and develop a set of benchmarks that truly show real-world performance. AMD has done quite a good job with their "+" rating. (EG, my desktop is an Athlon 2000+)
I give it 6 months, maybe a year. It'll be hard, but even Intel isn't so stupid as to put this off too long.
I have no problem with your religion until you decide it's reason to deprive others of the truth.
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
Dang.
I need just enough coffee to tide me over 'til I need more.
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
Moore's 'law' doesn't guarantee speed. It merely suggests a trend that every so often (18 months - 2 years) the amount of transistors on a chip doubles. In the past, that has meant speed because thinner wires produce less heat.
.09 wasn't going to get them anywhere. But imagine the culture at Intel where you daren't say anything to anyone about it, i.e. 'Just SHIP the thing!'
The problem isn't nearly as much to do with CPU scaling for scaling's sake - those processes continue to develop at the same or similar pace. It has much more to do with scaling for speed's sake. To Intel's horror, they've found that speed isn't scaling in a linear fashion like it used to.
It must have been a terrifying discovery for the poor engineers who discovered that
"...Well, there's egg and bacon; egg sausage and bacon; egg and spam; egg bacon and spam; egg bacon sausage and spam..."
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.
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