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Intel's New Chips, High Power And Low
sebFlyte writes "Centrino has been one of Intel's major successes of late, and they've just released the replacement, Sonoma. ZDNet has stripped the new chipset, and published a review of the new kit with all the technical details of what this new chipset will do for your laptop."
ZeroOne42 adds a link to Hardware Zone's exhaustive look at Sonoma, "complete with benchmark results between a Sonoma notebook (Fujitsu E8020) and a Centrino one (Gigabyte N512). Looks like Sonoma is closing up the technological gap between desktops and notebooks."
And on the desktop side, foxalopex writes "It seems that Intel's new dual-core CPU chips will have some of the highest wattage ratings ever seen on the X86 CPU market, which, according to Tom, wasn't what they initially said would happen. I guess this isn't too surprising seeing how AMD's been beating them on power usage in the last several revisions of chips."
Intel's latest portable computing platform is here. We lift the lid on the improved CPU, chipset and wireless components, and outline the benefits that mobile professionals are likely to experience.
After many months of delay, Intel's new 'Sonoma' portable processor and chipset combo is ready for inspection. The Centrino platform has been one of the company's notable successes over an otherwise bumpy period, as it has included most functions a notebook computer needs while balancing high performance against battery life. This recipe is followed faithfully in this latest iteration.
Pentium M with 533MHz FSB
Centre stage is taken by a buffed-up version of the processor previously known as Dothan, now in its Pentium M business suit, fabricated in a 90nm architecture and topped off with 2MB of Level 2 cache. Most of the new Pentium Ms have a 533MHz frontside bus (FSB), giving what Intel claims is a 33 percent increase in memory data transfer over the previous chip's 400MHz.
Most of the new Pentium M processors have a 533MHz frontside bus. The flagship Pentium M 770 chip runs at 2.13GHz.
The updated processor range clocks in at speeds of 2.13GHz (Pentium M 770), 2GHz (760), 1.86GHz (750), 1.73GHz (740) and 1.6GHz (730). There are also low voltage (1.5GHz, 758) and ultra low voltage variants (1.2GHz, 753) with 400MHz FSBs, aimed at manufacturers making very slim and light notebooks. Power requirements range from 5 watts for the 753 to 27 for the 770.
The only other addition to the Pentium M architecture is support for the Execute Disable bit, which with operating system support -- provided by Windows XP Service Pack 2, for example -- can prevent buffer overflow virus or trojan attack code from executing on the system stack.
Most of the differences in the updated Centrino platform live in the Alviso chipset, now officially named the Intel Mobile 915 Chipset Family. This includes support for up to 2GB of DDR2 DRAM, which uses a lower voltage than DDR1, has a smaller page size and extra power-down modes. Although the higher speed of DDR2 somewhat negates these low-power features, Intel says that with the 915, DDR2 memory at 533MHz will peak at 60 percent faster than 400MHz DDR RAM, and can save an average of 120mW per stick.The new memory is physically smaller, too.
The new Mobile 915 'Alviso' chipset supports up to 2GB of DDR2 RAM, Serial ATA and PCI Express, plus improved integrated graphics and audio.
The 915 chipset also includes a power-managed Serial ATA disk interface, and PCI Express, which is advertised at being up to twice as fast for I/O and four times as fast for graphics. Expansion cards for this will follow the new ExpressCard format, which is around half the size of the venerable PC Card standard, and which has a somewhat squashed orange rabbit as its logo. Most, if not all, notebooks with ExpressCard launched this year will also have a slot for older formats, and most, if not all, ExpressCard cards this year will duplicate functions already available with PC Card.
Integrated graphics on the 915GM -- the Graphics Media Accelerator 900 -- includes DirectX 9.0 hardware support for 3D games, as well as high-definition, wide aspect ratio and TV standard outputs. Intel claims that the integrated graphics has twice the raw speed of the previous Centrino chipset, the 855GME, and that with two 533MHz DDR2 memory modules the chip can reach a preliminary 3DMark03 performance rating of 1,140. This compares with figures in the 5,000 range for high-specification desktop gaming configurations and is unlikely to excite the hard core, but should be sufficient for games a couple of years old. Most business applications are expected to be unaffected.
Likewise, adoption of the Intel High Definition Audio standard means that the 915 chipset can support multiple independent audio streams -- such as streamed telephony at the same time as surround-sound DVD playback -- in ways that may have consumer applications but are currently underexploited i
We constantly hear about computer manufacturers "closing the gap" between laptops and desktops. this will never happen. At least for me, the two serve completely different purposes. My desktop is the workhorse, does all the compiling for both computers (both run linux), and is my general use machine. My laptop is low powered, and only used for work on the road. Last time i shopped for a laptop, most models were trying to do everything and more, while i just want a cheap laptop, no glitz except maybe wireless, with a long battery life. That's it. No 4 ghz 512 mgs ram monsters. I don't need 64 Bit processing. Keep it simple stupid.
...sheeze.
At least Intel appears to miss this goal. Documents released to system builders specify the Thermal design power (TDP) of Smithfield processors at 130 watts. This represents an increase of more than 13 percent over today's Pentium 4 5xx (Prescott) and the upcoming 6xx (2 MByte L2 Cache), which post 115 watts. Maximum supply current climbs from 119 ampere to 125 ampere. The new chips also consume more power than Pentium 4 Extreme Edition 3.46 GHz processor (116.7 watts) and Intel's most demanding chip: The Itanium 2 1.6 GHz consumes 122 watts.
I'm baffled by these numbers - specially considering AMD offerings perform comparably while consuming less power. I know these are dual-core designs, but it's still awfully high.
I always found hard to find how much of that consumed power translates onto wasted power (heat dissipation), but in any case, i wouldn't want to be in a room with a couple of Sonoma servers.
...maybe Microsoft will develop a "low-system-resources" OS for servers!
Oh, wait. Dozed off there for a moment.
Intel is one of the makers that makes you wonder, what is cooking behind the curtains. Right now IMHO they are just buying time with all the chips they are putting on the market, plust with their manufacturing power it is hard for AMD to win contracts from Intel. As far as I am think Intel will bring something new to the market in less then 2 - 5 years.
The only person who is capable of killing my karma, is me, do not even try to help me.
what is sucking all that power ? why do cpu's waste so much power in heat ? what part of the design needs so much power yet wastes most of it in heat ?
i thought what with longterm energy concerns we where supposed to be designing more efficient devices not less
But I don't really care a whole lot about what the bloody Wattage rating is on my Processor. I care if it can cook along bloody fast, and what features it has. Low Power CPUs are only a concern if my computer is running off a battery. On my desktop, feel free to ramp up the wattage if you can somehow use that to speed up my baby.
This is even worse then it seems. The actual power usage (from intel.com) is at 5mWA/ms, compared with the target of 3mWA. Thats a full 2 milliwatt amps over their target, and much higher then AMD!
Will intel use the same chipset as they were on Centrino, or will this be different and incompatible with current drivers? Will some other stupid licensing/bandwidth issue leave linux users stranded with a radio transmitter that doesn't transmit?
I remember I had to wait nearly a year before my centrino laptop could get working wireless on linux. This time around, there's no chance I'll buy without the hardware being supported first.
Only recently did I become aware that there was a marked architectural difference between 500 and 700 series CPUs - and I read about distinctions between Pentium mobile and Pentium M chips. While I applaud the move away from correlating the computing capability of a chip with its clock speed, I now find myself (as I suspect the typical man in the street also find themselves) completely unable to compare the relative performances between the various CPU series.
I realise that benchmarking is no panacea - but it would be really helpful to see a comprehensive set of benchmarks in order that I can establish a rough idea of the advantages of upgrading before splashing out on a machine with a newer processor. When Mhz mattered a good rule of thumb was that it was only worth considering an upgrade when the new CPU had a clock at least twice as fast as the old one... How should a user make this sort of decision with the new names? Is there any 'good' (unbiased) online material?
There's no such thing as a "Intel Pentium M Centrino". You probably meant "Intel Pentium M Dothan" or "Intel Pentium M Banias", which were the previous incarnations of the CPU marketed as Pentium M, part of the Centrino bundle (CPU+chipset+wireless).
Imagine the upcoming slashvertisements for Intel:
"Your primary source for sauna equipment"
"Your next water heater runs Linux!"
"Fusion inside"
Agreed if you're running a data center, or if you have a large business with hundreds of these things, I meant more for personal use.
I think that they may be taking the wrong approach by putting 2 whole processor cores on the same die...
We have SMT (HyperThreading in Intelese) which in my opinion is a pretty decent idea... just a crying shame about how they set about doing it. They sacrificed the silicon used by the original P4's integrated RamBus memory controller and put in the necessary silicon for their HT technology. The idea of getting an extra CPU for 'free' in the current HT processors doesn't work because in a demanding application, most of the execution units will be busy anyways.
Because of this, many old RamBus P4 machines can outperform their newer P4 siblings - mostly because the newer P4 do not have an integrated memory controller and have to go through the IO originally for peripherals. (ok, they are fixing this with the much higher pincount chips than the 1st gen P4 which did not need all that IO due to integrated RDRAM controller)
Instead, I believe that they need to design a processor with the original intent to be hyperthreaded (instead of the P4's original intent, to use RDRAM). What this means, is perhaps provide many execution units, maybe 50% more than what a single processor requires, and then make it look like 2 CPUs. Or perhaps double or triple the number of units and make it look like 4 CPUs to the software.
So... What they need for the consumer is a high-pincount device which is truely designed for hyperthreading (ie, has enough execution units available to be able to perform nearly as good as having a whole 2nd CPU)
And for the server market, bring back the integrated RamBus controller, still have plenty of pins so that the server can have perhaps 4 or more RDRAM channels to keep the data flowing fast enough to keep the 4 SMT logical processors occupied. (IIRC, the original P4 has 2 RDRAM 800 channels)
And while I am in my Intel rant mood, I'll criticise the Itanic... Surely with the EPIC architecture, all that branch-prediction and other crud they have in the processor is unnecessary... They need to cut away 2/3rds of the silicon, and get people to write compilers which really do work for them. IIRC, the whole point of all that extra cruft is to make it perform ok for brain-dead compilers. Either they get decent compilers out there (perhaps, open-source their Itanic compiler optimiser) or admit that EPIC was "another nice idea, pity it doesn't work in practice".
Rant off.
I still prefer Intel x86 CPUs to AMD's... but mostly because of a kind of weird loyalty to a chip manufacturer whose CPUs have been in my PCs since my old IBM PC/XT...
-- The universe began. Life started on a billion worlds...
-- Except on one where stupidity was there first.
I'm still hacking with my GBA. It doesn't have word or even a keyboard but it'll run for 10 hours in a power cut and never even get warm....
Time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like a banana.
If you're willing to shell out the 1200 bucks for the state of the art processor, you're probably willing to invest in some form of Noise Dampening for 50 bucks.
Since there is no iMac G5 in the list I can only assume you'd prefer the iMac G4. May I ask why?
While money is no object, I'll be picking up a PowerMac G5 with dual 2.5 GHz cores. And wo 30in displays to go with it. That would run...about...$10k.
Sorry, but I think this is a bit shortsighted.
If one processor consumes such amounts of energy, it doesn't matter. But there will be millions of those processors, every one of them consuming six times the power it needed to (comparing to the AMD processors). Can you imagine the power lost? (Well, not lost as Newton showed, but unnecessary transformed)
We should search for ways to reduce the power consumage of our society, not to extend it.
How much power do we need. :|
If you're not gaming, use a low resourse consuming OS - Debian etc. on a low power consuming laptop - VIA. Its just not right that people who need laptops only for e-mail, chat etc. are going around with laptops capable of cracking MD5 hashes in a resonable time. What a waste of resources. And they could lose "prestige" in what? 2 years. On th scrap heap in 10! It's amazing how readily people are willing to f$@* everything up
What I'd really like to see, especially in some of the larger form-factor notebooks, are two- or more way SMP machines. A dual 1.2ghz 753 taking a mere 10 watts would be a pretty impressive machine for a lot of tasks... Of course, I don't even know if the 7xx line is multi-capable.
You're special forces then? That's great! I just love your olympics!
I'd like to have a question answered.
I can't seem to find data on power consumption of CPU's at certain CPU usage % rates. I'd like to know what the P4's consume at 0% to 100% on single and dual core processors. I can't believe it's full wattage the entire time. So, does anyone have any info?
"Not the Earth!!! That's where I keep all my stuff!!!" - The Tick
Power is measured in "Watts". "Watt-Amps-per-second" (especially when you tack milli onto both numerator and denominator) is the SI unit for bullshit.
Well, I'm thinking he's talking about the whole platform.
Sonoma is the i915GM (a mobile version of the i915G, of course), an A/B/G WiFi card, and a Dothan. Centrino is the i855*M* (a mobile version of the i845, optimized for the P-M), either a B or a B/G WiFi card, and either Banias or an FSB400 Dothan.
...and informing you that everyone doesn't have the same needs as you. Plenty of people want their only computer(a laptop) to do all their work, so they want a laptop that does it all. Different people have different needs.
Where are your facts to support this? I am actually interested as to why AMD machines are unstable for games, I thought they where much better than Intel for that, and Intel is much better than AMD for video processing sorta tasks (due to long pipeline).
AMD chips seem to be a lot cheaper than similarly-fast Intel chips.
AMD chips seem to run cooler than comparable Intel chips.
AMD chips seem to have more support and 'options' than Intel chips.
Whats keeping Intel afloat? While mobo combo shopping recently, I barely paid any attention to the Intel line. All I saw was 1.3x price for 95% performance.
Job? I don't have time to get a job! Who will sit around and bitch about being broke and unemployed then?
Ok, so since Laptops were first created, their whole idea was to be a way someone could do work remotely or in areas where having a desktop was hard or near imposibe for one reason or another. in 2003 "November 2003 survey of Penn State University undergraduates found that freshmen were more likely to own laptops than upperclassmen. Of 1,838 respondents, 73.7 percent own a desktop, 32.2 percent own a laptop, 9.2 percent own both, and 3.4 percent own neither." http://pittsburgh.bizjournals.com/pittsburgh/stori es/2004/08/23/focus1.html
e ID=1513
e gory=31558&item=6736232824&rd=1&ssPageName=WDVW
(sorry if i am not suposed to link to auctions, it was the only english page i could find since its a japanese laptop)
"t). Currently, one-quarter of Americans own a laptop or notebook computer (23 percent)" http://www.thegoodsteward.com/article.php3?articl
What does this tell us? it says that laptops are becoming more and more popular, and as they become more and more popular, there is a bigger drive towards creating the "ultimite laptop"
As far as i see it, Apple and IBM are the only good laptop companies. i know thats a dramatic statement, but look at it, any laptop over 6LBS is WAY TOO HEAVY to carry around. Most HP/Compaq laptops are 7 to 9 lbs. Most dells are in that same range.
what the laptop industry needs is a re-working of laptops. Sony has just released the X505 VAIO laptop, this laptop is built in the way all laptops should be built. It weighs a mear 1.73lbs WITH battery in it, and has enough power to run almost anything exept games and video editing.( But trying to play games on a laptop is just stupid anyway, small screen and no mouse or full keypad) http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&cat
The new centrino chips are amazing, to put it simply. If you put a 2ghz Pentium M into a desktop and slap on a liquid cooling system, you can overclock it to be way more powerful then a 3.46EE or even a 3.8ghz P4. The pentium M is just years ahead of its time, and people having figured it out yet! Its kinda like black lotus for all you magic players!
Now that the Mac mini is out, if Apple sells millions upon millions of units it should only be a matter of time until one of the PC makers will come out with a mimic of it (like, say, Asus who is making the Mac mini in the first place).
It seems to me that Sonoma would be an ideal chipset to cram all of the functionality into a pint-sized box as small as, or slightly larger than the Mac mini. If the box has about as clean of a look to it, did away with the PS2, serial, and parallel ports, was user serviceable, and had room for a standard 3.5 inch SATA drive, I think it would do really well -- even if it weren't clad in anodized aluminum. Ahh... perchance to dream!
CPUs are evolving towards the ideal toaster controller: the same device will serve as control processer and heating element.
More power means either higher temperatures (shorter lifetime for all electronics) and/or more airflow (noise) or exotic cooling technologies (water, heat pipes).
I'm mystified that system vendors don't push livable green computers -- low noise, limited dust-bunny attraction, nice to look at. This is really important your living space, but not in your average server room.
Apple does pretty well, and that helps to justify their price point. The media controllers might be on the right track, too. Remind me why I roll my own boxes and hassle with Fedora updates...?
Fiat Lux.
I spent wasted hours in airports this year editing the video of my kids so I could give DVDs as gifts to the grandparents. I'm amazed I could do that for more than two hours on one charge, since it's running the disk and processor flat out. Sub-6 pounds even with a gig of RAM, DVD burner, 7200RPM HD, wireless and the rest. (And that's a two year old model!) I love Powerbooks. Apple desktops are meh, but their laptops rule.
"Seven Deadly Sins? I thought it was a to-do list!"
My laptop has a 65W power supply. I can be using the CPU and GPU fairly extensively, charging my 'phone and iPod from USB / FireWire ports and still have enough power left to (slowly) charge its own battery. A 130W CPU requires twice as much power for the CPU alone as my entire system (which, by the way, is the one I use for video editing and software development). This seems somewhat excessive.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
how do you expect these guys to make a buck on advertising when you steal their work?
I am actually interested as to why AMD machines are unstable for games
They're not. It's just that when the product you're promoting cannot compete on either price or performance, you're left with no other option than to spread FUD (fear, uncertainty, doubt.) The great thing about FUD is that it is completely abstract and imaginary, and cannot be measured.
The Athlon-XP and Athlon-64 both integrate memory and I/O controllers into the processor.
You're thinking of the Opteron and the Athlon 64. The Athlon XP is the older architecture and doesn't have either of these integrated onto the CPU.
Are car manufacturers going to be forced to install "smart" governors that read speed limit signs?
It's ludacris to think that the people that come in to my store to ask where the memory is because they ran out of space for their songs are making laws which limit what we can do when writing code.
Other dynamics might explain some of the growth but price was the big one. It wasn't too long ago laptops were twice the price of desktops and now you can snag some new ones for around $600.00
Dell, Fujitsu, and others make lightweight laptops as well. Many offerings exist in the sub-6lb category, just remove this bias that only Apple or IBM know anything about laptops. Today the Dell and Apple are manufactured by the same company and probably in the same plant. It all comes down to what each one determines that the market wants.
Myself, I don't want to take my PC with me. I am fine leaving it in its own room. There is a lot to be said for being free of technological leashes.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
Yeah, thought as much. I've been reading Custom PC (UK magazine) and they have pretty objectionable reviews towards both. Both chips have their strong points, but AMD is better for games, which is where speed counts as far as I'm concerned, I don't mind if ripping my CD takes a few more seconds, as long as my game speeds along. Saying all that, I've got an Intel chip in my aging pc.
Centrino is an Intel Pentium M series. it is considered a "Pentium M"
Damn, I was hoping this article would announce the return of the "Turbo" button!
That might work for you wish a desktop PC, but if you leave your PC on 24/7 (or have servers, which are generally always-on) then you can start to appreciate the impact on your power bill. Moving into the winter season, I replaced a Duron 1Ghz server (which died) with an low-power-consumption Epia. End result was that despite the fact that one generally uses more power in the winter (less light=more bulbs on, electric heating, etc) my bill actually lowered enough that the different was noticable.
And with the wattage there's always the heat issues too. In summer my AMD's get nice and toasty and can add uncomfortable heat to an already hot room. My laptop has a 2.8Ghz P4 (not P4m) which cranks out a lot of heat when running full bore, as well as requiring a 120W power brick.
If you put a grill on top of your case, you'll be able to fry some eggs. People won't be happy about their electric bill though.
But with a laptop, you do not need a CD drive or a floppy drive, those just add to the weight of the laptop and the thickness of it. a USB flash drive (thumb, pen, w/e drive) can hold all of your data on it, often even more then you can fit on a cd (1-4 gigs available) making CD burners obsolite. Now if you want to watch a movie, rip it to your hard drive and transfer it onto the laptop, no need for a dvd drive ether! I am not saying that Apple and IBM are the only ones who KNOW how to make good laptops, i am just saying they are the only ones that make CHEEP good laptops, sorry for not specifing that. But to get a light dell laptop you need to spend signifigently more. As far as i see it, people who want a gaming laptop are just stupid, the only reason laptops should be powerfull is if you need it for your job.
Also, cheep laptops from dell, compaq, hp, ect often fall apart or are made with junky exteriors.
P.S. We would be fine with a pentium 3 CPU if microsoft didnt keep reseasing a new OS that takes more power to run >_
I thought the same .. until I saw somebody play Wolfenstein Return to the castle on his dell laptop on a flight.
The best my laptop can manage was the SIMS :(
The next Itanium chip will stuff two multithreaded cores on one die and use _less_ power than the current generation Itanium/P4. It also reportedly sports a whopping 24MB on-die L3 cache. It also has dynamic power management technology where the chip will give you max frequency for a given power envelope. It continuously monitors voltage and thermals and sets the frequency accordingly. Very cool/tricky stuff to do in a process/supply voltage that's set up for digital design.
Intel transfer the difficult from Hadware to software, for get more power, programmer need more technology. -- chinaitn
See the little bars at the bottom, titled "Winchester 90nm" in the "power usage" link? I bought two of those recently. They run STONE COLD when idle and you can barely feel the warmth under load.
It's nice to know your CPU uses TEN TIMES LESS POWER when idle and at least three times less under load than an equivalently performing Intel, and is within 50% of the highest performance CPU on the market. AMD is going to beat Intel's desktop offerings silly with their new 90nm parts.
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Disclaimer: I have used nothing but AMD chips for many years.
High peak power consumption isn't that big of a deal (except for cooler bulk) for desktop use as long as the new dual-core chips can throttle down when under light load and use less power when they do.
Use your program of choice to monitor CPU load vs. time, and look at the usage profile. Computers spend 95% of their time just idling.
(My machine is running at 14% load, 36% throttle right now. I even have a switch to lock it at 800MHz out of 2200 (to save power), and don't notice a change in desktop performance when I do.)
That said, the P4's power consumption is just grotesque.
So far Sonoma doesn't impress. Looks like the new AMD Turion CPUs have a good chance of taking the lead in mobile computing. AMD is helping to optimize gcc for the new architecture so we can expect some awesome benchmarks.
This is interesting and all, but someone's forgotten to ask, "Will this run Linux?"
No, "Centrino" is a platform consisting of CPU (Pentium M), Chipset (855 family) and Wireless (PRO/Wireless family). In order to qualify to be labeled "Centrino", it has to respect all those aspects. That's why many a laptop maker build "Intel Pentium M" machines but not "Centrino" machines -- normally because they choose to ship with a different wireless card, and thus not being eligible to sport the "Centrino" tag.
Please don't mix multiplication and subtraction like that, it makes it sound like the chip uses
P-10P=-9P... lol
FRA: STFU GTFO
So does your mom!
I gotta admit, it was worth typing that even though I'm going to get modded a troll.
From one Mac owner troll to a fake Mac owning troll.
Blessed be he who reads this post, Cursed be he who tells my boss.
Prescott was the middle name of James Joule, after who the unit for heat (energy) is named
Did you see that fast Sunoma Bitch go by? :)
For comparison, the upcoming 2.8 or 3.0 GHz Intel dual core offering will be 130 W as mentioned in the Tom's Hardware news item. It's extremely likely that AMD's 2.2 GHz is even faster than Intel's 3.0 GHz, since a 2.2 GHz Athlon 64 is marked 3500+.
Future:
AMD's new Athlon 64 revision (to be released this month) will bring further power reductions thanks to the new strained silicon technology from IBM. It's conceivable that AMD can push the A64 well past 3.0 GHz with these optimizations, equivalent to 4500+ or more. And this is without breaking any new records in the power consumption arena.
The fact that a 2.2 GHz Athlon 64 can run at 35 watts full load (as shown by the Tom's Hardware chart) promises a good future for AMD.
Intel is dead in the water until they can swallow their pride and really start pushing P-M to the desktop.
I got some training on this about a week before it was announced and they told us that it would have some "features" that would be the first step toward trusted computing. The salesguy said that it was for security, but the methodology he talked about seemed to indicate that it would be capable of taking control of certain parts of your machine away from you. I asked if he thought that the technology could be used to have your own computer enforce others' IP rights on you, and he skillfully avoided the question...
... between desktop and mobile? Sure. It's because Intel hasn't found a way to improve their high end desktop products for about a year.