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Intel Roadmap Update: The Art of Naming Processors
THG writes "CoolTechZone.com has compiled a list of Intel processors from its roadmaps, and discusses Intel's naming convention. According to the article, 'Gone are the days when processor names were something as simple as their clock speeds. If you wanted a nice and powerful 3GHz processor, you simply asked for a P4 3.0GHz and that was it. Ever since Intel has decided to revamp its naming conventions, the confusion makes you wonder if the whole idea of renaming was a smart move. Moving on with Intel and it's desktop endeavors, the problem is that if the names were as simple as stated above, we would've somehow managed to figure them all out. But someone at Intel obviously wanted to ensure that we don't remember processor names without having a 100-page manual on product families, so there are modifications to each series, which may or may not be consistent across different series.'"
Proactive parties, who shall remain nameless, within the gates at Intel inform the Dredge Report IT Nooseletter that at the first sign of a superiour emerging processor technology from AMD will not be met with a hurried-up half-arsed cobbled together offering just to save face. Instead Intel plan to have ready several marketing campaigns to choose from which will proclaim something to the effect 'We've already got one, oh yes, it's very nice' while a fresh box of whips is sent off to R & D to move things along.
"think of BMW. Just like BMW has a series 3, 5, 6, and 7" except it'll be more like Fiat with a heatsink..."
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Actually I like Intel's complicated scheme; instead of looking up which CPU is which I just remember to go buy an AMD processor instead. Probably not what Intel had in mind when they came up with an overly complicated naming scheme however.
I Am My Own Worst Enemy
Wouldn't you be more concerned with the performance than a specific clock speed? This is of course assuming you're not using it as a RF source or something.
... is take a few letters or a small word and add "ium" to it. They had a chip which gave off a musky odour but was irresistable. Unfortunately the "Cuntium" never made it out of the lab.
Trolling is a art,
This is only going to get more and more confusing with multi-core. Users are going to have to distinguish not only based on clock speed, but number of processors, and with HT (number of logical processors). Add to that the fact that it is unclear what advantages these multiple cores have with current client operating systems, given that there aren't too many true multi-threaded applications out there, and this becomes bewildering for even a savvy consumer.
The reason for scrapping clock speeds in favour of these 'strange' naming conventions is not confusion, it is to help people realise that clock speed does NOT indicate how fast a processor is.
If people thought that a 3GHz celeron is as fast as a 3GHz P4 with HT, or indeed a 3GHz Athlon64, then they would be very confused indeed.
Many people did think this though, before the new naming conventions applied, so I think it is a good thing.
I thought Intel just put a regional map over a dart board:
*thunk* - "Williamette"
*thunk* - "Tillamook"
et cetera, et cetera
I want to drag this out as long as possible. Bring me my protractor.
Moving on with Intel and it's desktop endeavors...
It's means "it is". You meant to write its. With the exception of one's, possessive pronouns in English do not have apostrophes. Please return to third grade without passing Go.
If you are behind in GHz, avoid discussing it.
If you are behind in benchmarks, avoid discussing it. (Look! GHz!)
If you are behind in low-power, avoid discussing it.
If your expensive flagship "server" CPU is only 2% faster
than the gamer version, avoid discussing EVERYTHING that
could possibly matter.
Grrrr.... I wish I could force them to include SPEC benchmark
numbers in the processor names. Put the lowest number first,
then a "-", and then the highest number. Slimy bastards always
hide from the light.
"Do you want fries with that?"
Processor names, and their various compatible motherboards and heatsinks has been a thorn in the sides of custom computer builders for some time now. I understand we can't pin companies down to certain standards so everything works with all other available equipment, but wow it would be nicer if we could. You wouldn't have to learn the latest tech trends to get a 3GHz upgrade, by matching a CPU with a processor, with the right heat sink, and read up on the compatible RAM etc, since it would "just work".
Saskboy's blog is good. 9 out of 10 dentists agree.
grubtium
pusstium
HE HE~~~~!
Duron, Athlon, Itanium, Centrino, Xeon, Centron - ARGH!
Seriously - the name list is so long we could start naming HURRICANES after these!
I just want to know which one is the latest. Is something like "P9-MMX2" too much to ask? That way I can know I'm not being scammed because the processor would read P8 instead of P9.
When clock speeds were steadily climbing, it made sense to name chips using their clock speeds. If you wanted the newest, greatest chip, you just bought the one with the highest number. Actually, now that I think about it, most people didn't buy chips per se. They bought computers with the chips in them.
The other thing that is going on is that most people have all the cpu horsepower they need. Unless you're a gamer or you're making video, having a much faster computer won't benefit you that much. Computers are becoming a commodity item.
What Intel needs to sell its most powerful chips is for Microsoft to roll out Longhorn/Vista. Then, you might benefit from buying the 'best' processor. Of course, a lot of people will realize that they would be better off not switching or switching to Suse or Mandriva.
...the "Pentium Pro".
i ngSpaghettiMonster-forbid, "Sexium"!), they called it the "Pentium Pro". So, evidently, the number six was then redefined as "Five Pro".
;)
'Pentium' derives from 'penta'-- i.e. FIVE, as in "five-eighty-six", as in 80586-- the successor to the four-eighty-six.
That made sense. Kinda.
But then Intel designed the six-eighty-six, and instead of "Hexium" (or, Allah/Yahweh/Zeus/Vishnu/InvisiblePinkUnicorn/Fly
Then Intel kept improving (well, or at least adding to) the 686 design, but not only did they never label any of these newer-gen chips the 80786, 80886, 80986, etc., but they kept the goddamned 'Pentium' brand.
This makes perfect sense from a marketing (read: "a suit's") perspective, but absolutely no mathematical or logical sense.
If Intel invented counting, we'd all count something like this:
"Zero, zero, one, two, three, four, five, five pro, five II, five II point xeon, five III, five III point xeon, five IV, five IV point xeon, five IV extreme edition, five M..."
Of course, this isn't all that different from the convoluted way the French count...
With spending like this, exactly what are "conservatives" conserving?
I thought the move to the pentium et al was for copyright reasons. Iirc one cannot trademark or copyright things like "386" or "686".
Trademark issues drove Intel to make up processor names -- Intel couldn't stop competitors from selling non-Intel 80486 chips because chip numbering was a generic identification scheme in the electronics industry.
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
...they failed to call the P6 the "sextium".
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Didn't AMD start the whole thing? We could also blame Apple for starting the conversation of the "Mega Hertz Myth" too. But I like those 2 companies, so lets just blame Microsoft for the whole thing instead. ;)
..makes me reach for my Nexium.
If you disagree with me on social issues, then it's pretty clear that you are a narrow-minded bigot.
Clock speed is a silly way to gauge processors anyway, considering that AMD processors generally have a lower Hz than their current intel counterparts, but process more information per cycle, thus prompting them to name the chip after the equivalent clock rate of an intel chip which can be confusing. Why not something real, like Instructions per millisecond?
Did you really expect someone on /. to know the difference?
Code names are just as bad as the official part numbers.
However, if you haven't figured out already, Intel is moving away from directly selling CPUs based on their speeds and starting to bundle 'Platforms.'
This started mostly with Centrino (the platform), since it's not a CPU. And is now continuing into the Desktop and Server marketspaces.
It's their hopes that end users won't ask for "pentium 4!" but rather (insert catchy platform name here). It's worked well with Laptops. People want Centrino! And it'll likely work with Desktops, but probably not so much servers.
With that their naming conventions for individual parts are also going to get even more screwy...
But, on the other hand, Intel is not the only one to have evil codenames. They, as well as their competators, should just stick with sequential numbering so one can say "higher number is newer!"
It's just Crap.
Sounds nice and all, but you'd just end up with the lowest common denominator. We have only been able to reach the performance increases that we have (while reducing price at the same time) because of wholesale architecture platforms. If you insist that they maintain backwards compatibility, you'll only slow down the rate of progress. This may help a small set of people, but it would be detrimental overall.
Mod parent up for gratuitously making fun of the French.
Kind of liked last months toms hardware article better: http://www.tomshardware.com/cpu/20051025/index.htm l
Maybe they should consider something more suitable to their latest offering and switch to the names of cheeses.
They're way ahead of you! Have a look.
Scary, n'cest pas?
*thunk* - "Stinking Bishop"
I don't know why, but that was absolutely bloody hilarious.
I want to drag this out as long as possible. Bring me my protractor.
Maybe it was or maybe it wasn't but they had to do something. Intel got hammered by IP 'laws' like many other companies.
It is inevitable that chips and cars will be compared in this thread, so I'll start: the luxury automakers have their C-Class, E-Class, and S-Classes, (or 3-series, 5-series, etc for you BMW fans), and it works very well for them. Heck, eveyone knows that an F350 kicks butt over the F150. Point is, most people do not know how much horsepower these cars have, we just know they're somehow bigger and better from looking at the name.
The nerds and motorheads will always look up the technical details anyway. Intel just wants to make it easier for the layperson.
I was always informed that the 'common' AMD naming system (IE 2800+, 3200+, 4000+) :|
was supposed to be a direct comparison to Intel processors. For example, as many may know, an AMD 3200+ is supposed to work as well or better than an Intel P4 running at 3.2GHz (3200MHz). So if Intel is changing their scheme, AMD is screwed too
The Raven
AMD, on the other hand, uses a P-number which is directly comparable across processor lines and uses an established standard of a 1GHz Athlon Thunderbird = P1000. Everything else is relative to that. So you know right off the bat that an Athlon64 3000+ is only marginally faster than a Sempron 2800+, you don't have to play games like with Intel.
Don't put the FlyingSpaghettiMonster with the rest of those heathen gods!!
(for the benefit of those that do not speak Portuguese... sem pr0n = without pr0n.. although, due to a peculiarity of the Portuguese language, words cannot end with the letter 'n'.. IIRC, the whole Inquisition was started because some heretics started using the letter "n" at the end of words.. it's true! really!)
I think the reason for naming conventions change is relatively simple (though cetrtainly, IMHO, not too solid): Marketing. Gone are the days when only people asking 'what processor is in that box' were tecchies, geeks, nerd and co - to them, something like P4-2/3.2-800/2 , meaning Dual core Pentium 4@3.2 Ghz frequency and 800 MHz freq + 2 MB cache made sense as an understandable, technical naming convention. To Joe Schmoe, it is confusing. He likes to hear "Yes, sirree, the finest gen-yu-wain Pentium 4 Smithfield in there!"
Now, as I said previously, I don't think it's a terribly good reason - but from a marketing standpoint, it is quite a solid one - using memorable, simple names appeals to a far broader public, and if a customer can remember a product name, that's score one for marketing. Me, falling in more of a technically proficient minority, I long for long past days of meaningful names - but think of it. In the past, processors worked on one, maybe two sockets, with a relatively small number of differing parameters - everything was Socket 7 or Super Socket 7, every processor had same clock ranges, etc. So "Pentium 233 MMX" was really all you needed to know. Now, what to put in the name? Frequency? Some people don't consider it the main factor. Slot/socket type? FSB? Level 1/2 cache? Manufacter sub-series? So many things, so little space...
'...computers in the future may have only 1000 vacuum tubes and perhaps weigh 1.5 tons...' Popular Mechanics, 03/49'
Having recently started looking at Intel laptops, I was hoping for a little information on the Laptop processors, especially as the clock speeds stated and actual are so varied. Sadly, the article only touched on Laptop series processors and failed to provide any real depth to this point.
GrpA
Enjoy science fiction? "Turing Evolved" - AI, Mecha, Androids and rail-gun battles. What more could you want?
They only started naming CPUs differently after Intel made 1 mhz with a P4 do less than 1 mhz with a P3.
I'll take a "CowboyNeal" chip in my next PC!
I can quote numbers of CPU cycles as "nanoseconds" without conversion if the CPU runs at 1 GHz.
Two guys walks into a computer store, buying for processor chips.
One person, searching the counters, grabs a staff member. "Excuse me," he says, "do you have an Intel..."
The staff member groans, faces towards the person, and says "Okay, an Intel..."
The person jyrates to some unheard music as he says "Killamanjaro Quad-Core Ultrahyperthreaded Coochie coochie Low Watt Midtown Bus 314159629 processor."
The staff member asks "That's the Tango model or the Disco model?"
Meanwhile, the other person is already at the checkout line, having found her processor already. She asks the clerk "What's with him?"
The clerk replies "Oh, he's got a Intel-only motherboard. They're a pain in the butt, you know. I hear the latest requires you to take up contortion just to describe it right. We'll probably drop them for these AMD chips. One Opterion X4. Want a free copy of Windows Cleaner from SymcAffe?"
"No need," she replies, pointing to the little penguin logo on her t-shirt. When done, the babe cutely walks out, leaving the clerk in awe.
"I got to get me a copy of Linux."
--
# Canmephians for a better Linux Kernel
$Stalag99{"URL"}="http://stalag99.net";
Companies don't want to change their flagship product names. Think of Windows, everyone knows what it is and whatever the version (95, 98) or the brand (XP, Vista) people will still know that it is Windows. Just like a Coca-Cola is still a Coca-Cola no matter if it's Light, Vanilla or whatever,...
It should also be noted that Intel wanted to name their Pentium CPU 80586 but in US numbers cannot be trademarked so they chose the name Pentium (which stands for a 5 sided box (whatever it is called in math)) so competitors couldn't sell their compatitible CPU's under the same name (as was the case with the 486 for example). Instead of calling the 686 Pentium Pro they could have named it something completely different (Sixtium?) but as noted before, people remember names.
Yes, that is true (except for the M) at the moment, but as they announced earlier this year that is the next big thing they are working on.
Just wait, that will be the next way the brand their chips.
Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don't matter and those who matter don't mind. - Dr. Seus
SPEC is pretty decent for server workloads, especially when you consider a recent SPEC*RATE benchmark.
If you are thinking about multimedia instruction sets when you mention "good at media", you're somewhat wrong. Modern compilers use the so-called "multimedia" instructions for all sorts of regular apps. True multimedia benchmarking is better for whole-system comparisons that include a video card and audio device. That's nice, if you want to purchase a ready-made system. If you are shopping for a CPU and motherboard though, SPEC is great.
You can argue all you want that we shouldn't use one or two standard benchmark numbers to compare CPUs, but it just doesn't make sense to have every user trying to invent their own custom real-usage benchmark. Given that people do want a simple number to compare, SPEC is the best choice around.
I think I'm going to wait for "Google Maps" to map the "Intel Road Map" before I try to get anywhere in my BMW on Intel's Silicon Streets
Added to that, any techie for which it's a matter of importance (eg: the bloke at your local computer fixit shop, 14 year old gamerz) will have memorised which marketing name has which processor features within hours of them being released, lest they not appear to be l33t enough.
Everyone else just picks a price point and then buys whichever machine is at that price point the salesman tells them is best.
While if Capcom invented counting, we'd all count something like this:
"one, two, two champion edition, two turbo, super two, super two turbo, zero, zero two, ex, versus X-Men, ex plus, versus Marvel Super Heroes, zero three, ex two, ex two plus, three, three second impact, three third strike"
Mmmmmm....
88 is this: "four twenties ten eight"
WTF? I'd riot too if I had to deal with that. It's almost like Roman numerals!
Today I was at a meeting discussing computing issues for numerical simulations of particle physics being done on computers at CERN. One big complaint was that they're having a hard time finding places to put some of their machines because of thermal issues.
/proc/cpuinfo says they're running P4's or P4-based Xeons. Wouldn't running Athlon 64's or Opterons (in 64-bit mode, since they're all on Linux) give better performance and less heat?
Now, these machines all run Linux, do server duties and loads of floating-point math (Monte Carlo calculations), and are in a situation where cooling is an issue.
Nonetheless... on all the machines I've used there,
But you're right, it's all branding. Pentium has a nice ring to it.
This article is old (at least a year?), and not too newsworthy, primarily because :
THERE IS NO EASY ANSWER, because as a G5 PowerPC demonstrates... Mhz is near meaningless for computation estimation!
Intel knew of this over a year back when they approached 4Ghz with nothing to show for itself.. so that is why the naming is as it is nowadays
HT could mean Heat Thrower...
AMD has better price performance and performance over watts. Might be a good advert though, heating an igloo with a Intel HT!
At the lab I work in, we have had a tougher and tougher time remembering all the codenames for the new procs. Intel suffer from it more than AMD. Especially now that they are all the same frequency, but some have multiple cores, hyperthreading, 64 bit, it is especially confusing in their xeon lineup. We just started going by the espec numbers on the chips because all the codenames just got too confusing, and much of the time the codename would span multiple proc configurations. We really just wish they could consolidate some of their product lines over at intel.
I hear and I forget. I see and I remember. I do and I understand. -Confucius
I've been saying that for years. I don't think AMD's much better though. Everything's been Athlon until Sempron came out. Just look at Athlon 64; they're like four versions, at least. I got a stepping 4 Athlon 64 3000+. It's completely different from the Athlon 64 3000+. For starters it uses a different socket and has 120nm transistors instead of 90nm. Same name though.
BTW, Sexium doesn't make that much sense. Penta is from ancient Greek, as is hexa, so hexium makes sense. For sexium to work (and that would be sweet), pentiums would have had to have been called quintiums. (Unus, duo, trio, quattour, quintus, sex, septum, etc.). Personally, I think AMD should have called their 586 a quintium, and then called Athlon sexium. Man, the ad campaigns would have ROCKED! The funniest part about the whole pentium name is that while penta is Greek, the -ium ending is Latin, bastardized Latin at that. (the -um ending is certainly Latinesque, the 'i', however, is not. Words ending in -ium are called i-stem words and the 'i' is part of the base of the word, not the ending.). Intel's name people obviously had no background in dead languages, that's for sure.
Duron?
AMD's thing has been that Athlons are the best, and others are for desktop use.
> wish I could force them to include SPEC benchmark
> numbers in the processor names.
ALL BENCHMARKS ARE FLAWED! We talk about faster processors, but faster for what? This isn't a consistant thing. A command could take 3 clocks on one processor and 4 on the other. That single CPU command could make a difference in one benchmark and not another when those add up. Multiply this by tons of instructions of differing proportions. There are different methods for doing a lot of things in every CPU. Different routes, onboard memory controllers, interfaces, signalling, etc. It's not as simple as "and now a CPU test that uses a lot of memory".
Numbers mean nothing until you install what you need to install and try it out. Note how many DIFFERENT games and programs benchmarkers run. They usually have 6 games or so (and they're targetting these gamers who play such games), and a ton of programs.
Benchmarks are a guess based on a sample workload. Change the workload and you change the benchmarks... not always proportionally.
when you see the word 'Linux', drink!
The Pentium 4 bears little resemblance to the P6 design. The Pentium M, however, is a P6 design, with modern features.
Then who decides which instructions? Floating point operations per second? Well FLOPs is nice but, it doesn't go over well with Joe Schmoe. And even then, most of what a computer designed for generic use does involves memory access and integer operations. So maybe Millions of Instructions Per Second? Well, MIPS was nice, until it became a Meaningless Indicator of Processor Speed.
Different architectures pipeline different instructions, and with a changing number of cycles. It's pointless to measure processor speed generically. The latest AMD chip can read 256 to 512 bytes of memory in half the number of cycles as the P4 Extreme Edition. That's a fact that matters, but it has absolutely no relevance to MIPS, FLOPS, GHz, or any other acronym one can think of.
When CPUs can perform every operation in exactly one 'instruction', then we would have a valid measure of generic CPU speed.
Is the next generation Pentium called a Sexium? Only makes sense.
cheap labor conservatives - they want to keep you hungry enough to be thankful for minimum wage.
Gamer benchmarks greatly rely on the video card. That's no way to test a CPU.
SPEC is a very nice mix of stuff, much of it similar to what I do all the time.
If I wanted a whole-system benchmark I might use SDET, but since we are
discussing general-purpose CPU performance here, SPEC is most appropriate.
Actually, it was Intel who started the scheme, for a very simple reason: you can't trademark a number. So the 386, 486, etc. names could be used by any of their competitors, which didn't make Intel very happy. Enter: the Pentium. Anybody could legally make and market all the "586" chips they wanted, but Intel owned the Pentium name, so AMD, Cyrix, etc. had to come up with their own.
yaa, a Pee-four sounds real macho....nyet. And what's an "opteron", didn't Kirk kill all them dudes off with a photon torpedo way back???
Wait! One old car name fits for processors! The Gremlin!
And if Microsoft invented counting we'd have:
1, 2, 3, 3.1, 3.11 for Workgroups, 95, 98, 98 SE, 2000, Me, XP, Vista
This is fun.
I forgot about Duron. And Opteron. But, even so, the Athlon/Pentium comparison still survives. Remember Celeron.
Actually closer to
1, 2, 3, 3.1, 3.11 for Workgroups, 95, 95 OSR2, 98, 98 SE, 2000, Me, XP, 2003, XPx64, 2003x64, Vista
I agree that Intel's new naming scheme is confusing at best. Perhaps they should name their processors based on performance instead of clockspeed. The equivilent of an Athlon 64 3800+ could be called Pentium 3800++ Codename, Ass-kicker (Extra plus added by the Marketing Department) (Codename also created by Marketing)
Dont get me started on Centrino! When Intel itself calls the best feature of the system "well-advertised", andthe only differenceis that the system is using less power (because oflower clock speeds) and have a built-in wireless... And people still are willing to shell out 1.5K extra!
'Pentium' derives from 'penta'-- i.e. FIVE, as in "five-eighty-six", as in 80586-- the successor to the four-eighty-six.
That made sense. Kinda.
Intel also held a contest in the company to name the 80586 chip, so someone outside the usual marketting droids came up with "Pentium". Perhaps when the 80686 came out Intel had invested so much money in getting the Pentium name known they didn't want to have to start over again on the brand recognition with the new processer and the marketers couldn't come up with anything more clever than the Pentium/5 connection.
i think the mistake intel made has been sticking with the pentium brand for too many generations. considering how many core architectures have fallen under the "pentium" umbrella, and how many are half under it and half not, it does make compatibility determination deceptively hard. i think they put just way too much stock in brandname pull, and were afraid to launch a new name/logo/marketing strategy.
granted, in their position as de-facto market leader and average-joe default choice, brand consistency has probably been a smart move, since the average computer user doesn't give a CRAP about the specs as long as it works fast enough. however, they've made themselves incredibly unattractive to the DIY crowd. for SHAME, ignoring a relatively small portion of their target market. i mean REALLY.
/. is what happens when geeks talk. get used to it.
Remember the 6x86 anyone? The "P166" that could keep up with the real Pentium @ 166MHz at integer performance but ran Quake at like 10 FPS because it didn't have a pipelined FPU??
You surely must mean kilograms per watt. :)
"Of course, this isn't all that different from the convoluted way the French count... ;)"
Yeah, I've always struggled with the way the French count. Doesn't it go something like:
"0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8..."
if the names were as simple as stated above, we would've somehow managed to figure them all out
Welcome to the world called pricing. Pricing is the discipline to make comparing products hard to the customer. Customers when taking the wrong decision will almost always spend more.
I hadn't the slightest objection to his spending his time planning massacres for the bourgeoisie... (P.G. Wodehouse)
yes, if the only french you've ever learnt is how to count to 10.
... ... nothing too strange in here ... ... 69,
1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10
11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 10 + 7, 10 + 8, 10 + 9,
20, 21, 22
60 + 10, 60 + 11, 60 + 12, 60 + 13, 60 + 14, 60 + 15, 60 + 16, 60 + 10 + 7, 60 + 10 + 8, 60 + 10 + 9
and now the _real_ fun begins...
4 * 20, 4 * 20 + 1, 4 * 20 + 2, 4 * 20 + 3, 4 * 20 + 4, 4 * 20 + 5, 4 * 20 + 6, 4 * 20 + 7, 4 * 20 + 8, 4 * 20 + 9,
40 * 20 + 10, 4 * 20 + 11, 4 * 20 + 12, 4 * 20 + 13, 4 * 20 + 14, 4 * 20 + 15, 4 * 20 + 16, 4 * 20 + 10 + 7, 4 * 20 + 10 + 8, 4 * 20 + 10 + 9,
and finally.....
100 (cent)
Advanced users are users too!
instead of "Hexium" (or, Allah/Yahweh/Zeus/Vishnu/InvisiblePinkUnicorn/Flyi ngSpaghettiMonster-forbid, "Sexium"!)
I don't know why you bothered putting all that crap in, "Sexium" would have followed "Quintium." The prefix is from the wrong language to follow "Pentium."
If you were trying to be funny, you failed.
I always liked the Tanglewood processor because it was named after something in my hometown.
The SPEC CPU benchmarks are somewhat memory-bound when new. The current set was released in 2000. A new release is expected in 2006.
While imperfect, SPEC sure beats GHz as a way to approximate performance of whatever random real app you might want to run. Remember, people are using GHz. GHz is a joke of a benchmark, like BogoMIPS.
Companies are often thought of by their flagship product. Intel's problem is that Pentium, as a name, is larger than Intel, as a name, to the average consumer. Unfortunately this means that if you drop the name you lose all of the positive power associated with it (positive power in non geek circles) and you have to build a new brand image. Intel would have to spend massive amounts of money to do so, meaning they will probably only do so if they see the potential for making a greater amount of money.
It's the ALL NEW:
INTEL 6000 S.U.X.!
It's Intel's BIGGEST chip yet because bigger is better than ever!
I'd buy *that* for a dollar!
you forgot 95 OSR 2.5 :)
Okay, the 4*20 is not an issue, because you simply say "quatre-vingts" instead of eighty, i.e. it's just a name, like eighty. And, concerning 10+7, 10+8, etc: It's the same in English with "thirteen (3+10), fourteen (4+10), ...". The only difference in french is that they have non-intuitive* names between 11 and 16 instead of 11 and 12.
But this hole soixante-dix (60+1=70) and quatre-vingt-dix (80+10) busines does tend to confuse non-native-speakers. At least Belgium and the French Swiss have made improvemnts by intoducing "septante" (70) and "nonante" (90), the Swiss even go as far as replacing "quatre-vingt" with "ottante"
*) I stipulate here that intuitive means "ten-digit" + "digit", as in twenty-four = 20+4. "Eleven" and "twelve" make no sense at all, it should be one-teen, two-teen... - or, actually, to follow a single convention for all the numbers: tenty-one, tenty-two, tenty-three...
What about the internal, projects-specific code-naming of chips? I've heard of them being named after locations, rivers, greek gods, ski-runs, etc. How do you code-name your chips/projects?
I like the idea of "families" of chips that are generally alike. Just like in auto's, while honda makes Accords & Civics there are numberous grades of each, while still being able to distinguish all civics as being below the accords. i.e. if Intel would let up on the secret codename crap and use names more directly then the numbers would not be so confusing, such as all Prescott's were between 2.4 and 3.4 GHz with Hyper-threading and Northwoods were the same GHz but none had hyper-threading it would be easier to distinguish general trends. Currently, whatever is the newest best gets some new name and everything else is yesterday's greatest so we might as well start saying good bye. So why have they stuck with Pentium so long and the P4 with every desktop chip for 5 years? Sockets, Ghz, Cores, L2 Caches, Cores all as numbers they might as well start using Hexadecimals to insure that nobody understands it for sure
Relax, aren't you lucky that it is only my Opinion?
Talking about megaflops will certainly make it easier to compare processors and remember which model is which, as well as capture architectural differences. For example, Athlon 600 (for 600 megaflops), Pentium 500 etc.
As others have pointed out, 88 is 'four-twenty-eight'. If, however, you say it in the equivalent English, as 'four score and eight', it suddenly doesn't sound quite so alien. The Gettysburg Address begins: 'Fourscore and seven years ago ...'
The really convoluted ones in French are the seventies and nineties:
74 = 'soixante-quatorze' (sixty-fourteen)
99 = 'quatre-vingt-dix-neuf' (four-twenty-ten-nine)
However, it's far simpler in Belgian French: they still use the old French words for seventy and ninety:
74 = 'septante-quatre' (seventy-four)
99 = 'nonante-neuf' (ninety-nine)
The vigesimal system in Europe is believed to have come either from the Basques or from the Normans.
If your comment title says 'Re: Foo', I'm not likely to read it.
there are lots of strange city names http://www.floydpinkerton.net/fun/citynames.html wait til they name one Hornytown or Gaylordsville
I cannot be arsed to go analyse what is what, yet I AM a techie. .. 'cuz I aint getting no AMD! /G
So, I'm going to hold out for when the naming-barrage ends
Intel's strategy: When you can't compete on the merits, confuse the customer.
And 95 OSR 2.1
Well, I wasn't really saying it was difficult...just kind of bizarre.
Afterall, when I was taught french no one said "Eighty is really four times twenty", they just said "Eighty is quatre-vingts", so as you say, it was a non issue - it's just kind of amusing when you look at it.
Also, from whatI understand, most western languages have irregular names for the teens - probably because people came up with words for those numbers before being introduce to base 10 and arabic numerals.