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RIP Pentium II, 1997 - 2006
zorn writes "The Register has the scoop that 'this week Intel told its customers that it is to formally discontinue production of the Pentium II at 266, 333, 366 and 466MHz. Documentation seen by The Register reveals that you'll be able to continue ordering the part for a year, with the last trays leaving the chip giant's Pentium II warehouse on 1 June 2006.'"
For desktop use, yes, they are horribly slow by today's standards. But for simple embedded solutions, they can at times be considered overkill. Ex: When I get around to putting a mediapc under my drivers seat... I have no need or desire for a chip whose clock is measured in Ghz, simply because it's far more power (heat and draw) than I need to play mp3's and basic custom software.
Help Brendan pay off his student loans
This trend to move away from old technology such as the Pentium II that still serves a valid purpose is silly, part of a push to always be bigger and better.
Now I'm not saying that the Pentium II is viable for any new programmes, heck, I find my Pentium 4 a little slow at times. I first started questioning this push over the summer, when I worked at a Canadian government office. The workers there ALL had brand-new Pentium 4 Dells (and it wasn't just our office, the entire facility had been upgraded), with full sound cards, video, you name it. Of course, sound was all deactivated as it was a cubicle farm.
Needless to say, what did the people use these Pentium 4's for? Word Processing. Perhaps a bit of Excel, and some random surfing of the web. I wasn't complaining, because I was underworked and could take advantage of the Pentium 4's spectacular Solitaire and Minesweeper processing, but it wasn't necessary.
The Pentium II can run Office applications fine, and heck, that's waht the majority of work force productivity is? Now you'll have to buy a better model to use Word.. wow.
I don't know the cost difference in terms of productivity between the P2 and the P4, and I'm sure they can concentrate on just producting the P4 even more on masse, but this is simply going to give procurement departments an excuse to connive themselves better equipment.
Well, that devolved into a rant, but hopefully my point can still come across clear! Cheers.
"There's no success like failure, and failure's no success at all."
- Bob Dylan
I, for one, was saddened when the Arch Deluxe was discontinued.
Do you remember the story of NASA searching i8086 CPUs for their space shuttles just two years ago? There are other stories, I remember some companies paying a lot of money for ancient Toshiba 386 laptops that was the only computer certified to "remote control" a certian pacemaker. A re-certification of a new system would have cost much more than buying a few 386 laptops at pentium-class prices.
Some systems (not only NASA shuttles) are designed around a randomly selected CPU, and they run with software that needs the exact behaviour and timing of that special CPU. Say hello to the world of embedded systems.
This message from intel is just a warning for designers of embedded systems that there will be a day when there is no spare P-II left.
Tux2000
Denken hilft.
Parent is modded +1, Insightful.
Ah, Slashdot... your moderation is always a source of entertainment...