Slashdot Mirror
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.'"
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.
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.
...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?
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.
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.
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.
Interesting you mention light trucks. We know that Dodge and GM are better than Ford because they have 1500's, 2500's, and 3500's.
At one point, GM used 10, 15, 20, and 25. I think Dodge had a D-10. But, Ford countered with the 100 (having dropped the F-1).
Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. -John Lennon
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.
(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!)
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!
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.
That depends on their code. Numerical simulations are mostly floating point that's often quite vectorizable. In that case, they could be using SSE2 quite a bit, which generally works better on the Intel chips -- but they probably won't get much benefit from this unless they're hand-optimizing at least a few of their inner loops. Most compilers can do some automatic vectorization, but they don't make good enough use of the capability to overcome the Intel chip's shortcomings elsewhere, as a rule.
OTOH, if they're doing a lot of vector math, they'd probably get considerably better performance still by writing the code to execute on the GPU instead. The obvious shortcoming of that would be accuracy problems -- the GPU's floating point is engineered far more to maximize speed than accuracy.
--
The universe is a figment of its own imagination.
The universe is a figment of its own imagination.
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.