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Intel Yonah Performance Preview

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on from the gastrointestinal-marine-research-lab dept.

illusoryphoenix writes "Anandtech has an interesting preview of the successor to Dothan (Pentium M's second generation), Yonah, with tests run on an engineering sample. It seems like latest Pentium M is still lagging in the floating point area, but has gained some ground overall. It's also interesting to note their comparisons to the Pentium D/Netburst based dual core."

43 of 200 comments (clear)

  1. Wow by Sinryc · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I really have to wonder when Intel will start using this technology in desktops. It really does seem like a good idea. From TFA "At 2.0GHz, Yonah is basically equal to, if not slightly slower than an Athlon 64 X2 running at the same clock speed in virtually all of the tests we ran. " That right there should show that Intell is should switch its R&D and support the Pentium M as a desktop chip.

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    1. Re:Wow by xWeston · · Score: 2, Informative

      This review was done with a desktop motherboard for the Pentium M...

    2. Re:Wow by darkmeridian · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Of course, it may have to get rid of its inventory of desktop Pentium 4 chips and might conflict with Intel commitments to Dell not to obsolete all of their offerings. Intel has to change fabs to make the new chips in larger amounts. All of the marketing about higher clock speeds have to go out the window, too. Furthermore, Intel has to concede that it made a huge mistake and that AMD was right all along with regard to the performance per cycle/pure megahertz debate.

      --
      A NYC lawyer blogs. http://www.chuangblog.com/
    3. Re:Wow by drsmithy · · Score: 2, Informative
      The Yonah core uses 92W at idle.

      The power draw figures given on the last page are for the *entire system*, not just the CPU.

  2. There goes my new laptop... by pingveno · · Score: 4, Funny

    I just bought a brand-new Pentium M (Dothan) laptop a few weeks ago, and then this new uber processor comes out. Well, that's the computer industry for you...

    --
    "it's not about aptitude, it's the way you're viewed" - Galinda
  3. Not impressed. by Dr.+Spork · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Wow, a 65nm chip consumes slightly less power and performs slightly worse compared to AMD's bottom-of-the-line 90nm X2. Who's amazed? Aren't we just applauding because we see Intel as the big retarded kid who's just managed to tie his own shoes? What I'm trying to say is that this is no big accomplishment. If AMD's 65nm chips were turning out these sorts of performance numbers, we'd all scream about how this is a huge letdown, a step backwards, is this finally the end of AMD, etc.. So let's keep some perspective.

  4. Re:Synopsis by Jeffrey+Baker · · Score: 4, Informative

    Er, the 2.0GHz Yonah in these tests is slower in nearly all cases than the Athlon 64 X2 3800+, which is the slowest CPU in AMD's lineup. The _top_ of AMD's line would be the Opteron Model 880. The best CPU they market for the desktop is the Athlon 64 X2 4800+, which has double the cache and runs at a 20% higher clock speed than the 3800+. So, Intel's upcoming chip /barely/ hangs with AMD's bottom of the line. Compared to AMD's current best, Yonah would be left standing in the dust. And Yonah hasn't even been released yet.

    About the only good thing I can say about Yonah is it will run MacOS X.

  5. Re:This is a laptop chip? by netwiz · · Score: 4, Informative

    that's total system power, not just the proc. That's going to include the chipset, disk, peripherals, USB devices, and the GPU.

  6. Belly of the sea monster? by BarryNorton · · Score: 2, Funny

    With a name like Yonah (aka Jonah), what are they saying about their motherboards?!

    1. Re:Belly of the sea monster? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

      That they're peaceful?

      (FYI: the Hebrew word Yoh' nah is transliterated as "Jonah" and translated as "dove" or "pidgeon". It, like the dove symbol, could also be used as a symbol of peace or serenity.)

  7. Not impressed, because you didn't pay attention by Tumbleweed · · Score: 3, Insightful

    This is a _mobile_ chip being compared to _desktop_ chips. You _should_ be impressed. And when the next generation comes out in 2H2006, Merom, any remaining performance gap will probably be gone, plus it'll then be 64-bit, too, though of course, AMD will hopefully keep making strides in the meantime, with their upcoming socket M2-based offerings.

    That this is likely the Intel chip to be used in upcoming Macs is a very good sign for future Mac owners like myself.

    1. Re:Not impressed, because you didn't pay attention by Jeffrey+Baker · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Why should we be impressed again? AMD's top mobile CPU, the Turion 64 ML-37, is equivalent to the Athlon 64 X2 3800+, which is the CPU that beats Yonah in all these tests. So the only thing to be happy about here is that Powerbook and iBook battery life will probably be pretty good. And of course those models are currently using ass-slow G4 chips, so anything is an improvement.

      But for iMac and Powermac buyers what this means is being stuck with Intel CPUs that really can't hang with AMD's offering. I mean seriously, AMD currently offers FIVE models that are faster than this Yonah thing, all of which are also faster than the best of the Pentium 4 line.

    2. Re:Not impressed, because you didn't pay attention by Jeffrey+Baker · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Yeah sorry, I was only thinking about single-threaded performance. I too would like to see the MT Turion compared, but I believe there's no 2.0GHz part in that line (yet). You'll hear no argument from me about Intel's 65nm process and wonderfully low power consumption. It's obviously going to make from great mobile Macs.

    3. Re:Not impressed, because you didn't pay attention by Dun+Malg · · Score: 4, Insightful
      A Turion isn't equivalent to an Athlon X2 (even if the Turion was dual-core, which it isn't); they've also got different FSB speeds, AFAIK.

      FWIW, unlike Intel which is still bottlenecking memory access over the FSB through the northbridge, for AMD64 series CPUs the FSB speed is largely irrelevant to performance. FSB only really matters when you're using it to talk to RAM, and all the AMD64's have HyperTransport on-die memory controllers running at 800mhz. At present the Turion is only single-core and has only a single channel on-die memory controller, compared to dual core, dual channel for the X2. As I understand it though, the Turion will be dual core and dual channel as well Q2 2006.

      --
      If a job's not worth doing, it's not worth doing right.
  8. Front Side Bus speed? by MLopat · · Score: 2, Interesting

    One thing that's always put me off of the Pentium M's has been the 533MHz Front Side Bus speed when the P4 FSB's are at 800MHz and some extreme editions at 1066MHz. Does anyone know what the FSB speed is off this chip? -- its not mentioned anywhere in TFA.

    1. Re:Front Side Bus speed? by Hard_Rock_2 · · Score: 2, Informative

      From a different article :
      "Pricing will stay level, too. The T1600 Yonah--which runs at 2.16GHz, comes with a 2MB cache and a 667MHz bus--"
      so it seems theve upped it a bit, exactly the same jump from 400 to 533 for the dothan.

    2. Re:Front Side Bus speed? by obeythefist · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Does it matter? They benchmarked it against AMD systems running 400MHz DDR memory, and the AMD systems perform better.

      Furthermore, faster RAM = more expensive RAM... why pay more money, when I could pay less, buy AMD, and get better performance than Intel?

      --
      I am government man, come from the government. The government has sent me. -- G.I.R.
  9. Not so great? by taskforce · · Score: 4, Interesting
    While the rhetoric in the article is pretty positive, if you actually read what they're saying and not how they're saying it, it's not that great.

    It consumes less than a 3800 X2? Isn't the fact that a laptop chip is even being *compared* to a dual core desktop chip in terms of power consumption quite worrying? And for that same "little big less power" they're getting a "little bit less speed"? I thought this was all about performance per Watt?

    --
    My 3D Texturing Skinning work (under construction)
    1. Re:Not so great? by tomstdenis · · Score: 2, Informative

      It takes resources to efficiently decode variable length opcodes [CISC no less] to RISC operations.

      Look at the PPC, ARM and MIPS way of doing things. They have fixed length opcodes and as a result don't really have large decoders [they still have them but that's mostly to tell the core which pipeline and resources the opcode has].

      If the x86 were a fixed length opcode ISA I'd say "sure why not" but it isn't. As a result they have to dedicate scan engines and the such. For instance, the AMD64 reads a 16 byte window which [I've heard] it appends to a sliding maximum of 8 bytes it has already and then decodes upto three opcodes.

      What happens when you have opcodes that cross the boundary? You get stalls.

      In the ARM world all opcodes are aligned on 32-bits [the lower two bits of the pc register are not available]. So if an ARM reads in 16 bytes it KNOWS it has 4 instructions [or 8 if it's in thumb mode]. It doesn't have to have a "scan" engine to find the opcode boundaries nor have to worry about verification on boundaries [e.g. if an opcode spills into the next window].

      Decoding is a large enough problem though, look at the P4. They had to use a decode "trace" cache just to keep the core fed [and even then it fails]. The AMD processors have fairly complicated decode engines that can decode most x86 instructions three at a time at full clock speed. That can't be cheap.

      A "dual mode" chip where you do x86 and RISCop would defeat the purpose since you still have the x86 decoders there. The only solution is to drop the ISA alltogether.

      Tom

      --
      Someday, I'll have a real sig.
  10. Re:This is a laptop chip? by serbanp · · Score: 2, Informative
    The problem is that the wattage you mention is for the entire system, not just the CPU.

    This makes also Anand's comments w.r.t. the AMD/Intel consumptions disingenuous at best. It's hard to measure the CPU power, but if he wanted to compare the CPUs, he should have done his homework.

    Based on the delta wattage (16W, including all other loads, e.g. memory access) and the fact that in a 65nm process the idle current is still less than 40% of the full-load, I'd say that yes, this is a very low-power CPU (to be branded as 25W maybe?), perfectly suitable for a notebook.

  11. Re:This is a laptop chip? by Hard_Rock_2 · · Score: 3, Interesting

    The dothan caps at 27 wats, the yonah goes from approx 25-49 under max load(depending on model, there is an Extreme gamer chip version so that might explain the rather high second number), but it will most definetly not use 45 when not plugged in and probably go closer to the the min.

  12. Moore's law by digitaldc · · Score: 2, Interesting

    it costs Intel just as much to make a dual core Yonah, as it did for them to make a single core Dothan.

    Considering it is the same price for much improved technology, this proves Moore's law is correct?

    see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moore's_law

    --
    He who knows best knows how little he knows. - Thomas Jefferson
    1. Re:Moore's law by tomstdenis · · Score: 2, Informative

      Technically the statement isn't true. What they're alluding to is the smaller the chip the more per wafer means more # of chips [same % of failures]. What they missed though is the more features [e.g. transistors] the more likely some are not aligned or otherwise created properly. That creates "worst case" chips which operate slower than they should.

      For instance, if you double the transistors but simulaneously half the size you make a huge gain in yield but lower the # of high end models. To truly lower the cost you need smaller chips with less features [features as in edges on your photomask]. This is why [among other things] you see such a huge markup from a 1.8Ghz part to 2.0Ghz even though it's only 200Mhz [and the part was originally designed for 2Ghz].

      Tom

      --
      Someday, I'll have a real sig.
    2. Re:Moore's law by tomstdenis · · Score: 2, Insightful

      I suggest you look up the overview of how they make processors. You'll see it's an entirely "analogue" procedure.

      A simpler analogy would be egg "production". They take 100s if not 1000s of animals laying eggs, a certain percentage are duds [e.g. not fit for human consumption], certain percentage are small, medium, large, etc. The same basic process is used in each case. Feed animal, wait, capture egg, rinse, repeat.

      It isn't that they "shrinkray" some eggs and sell them as "small" it's that they ended up that way.

      Similarly when you shoot the laser [or interference pattern] through the mask to hit the die the light may be slightly off meaning the transistor may not be entirely in place and as a result take longer to switch [or not at all, e.g. dud]. The result is a chip that in order to meet the clock period overall has to be clocked slower.

      Remember that the processor is as fast as the slowest clock domain part. So if your 50K transistor ALU [pulling that # out of my ass] has one transistor that is 20% slower the entire ALU must be clocked 20% slower or it'll fail.

      A way to mitigate this would be to have different clock domains for parts but that would make them slower [more latency] and harder [and larger] to produce. So they design with margins. Your 2Ghz processor has parts in it that are actually meant for 2.2Ghz [or even higher] and account for "worst case" processors their yield of 2Ghz parts ends up being profitable.

      The same is true in any digital parts design. A 200Mhz AES core likely can hit 250Mhz or higher in "best case". But customers don't care for "best case" because they want a design they can mass produce reliably. I'm not an EE, I don't claim to know all of the facts but that's the "jist" of it as I got it from working at a fabless hardware firm.

      Tom

      --
      Someday, I'll have a real sig.
  13. Re:Why no on-die memory controller? by tomstdenis · · Score: 2, Interesting

    that's what we call "vendor lockin" ... Intel will do anything in their power to make it expensive to move to a competitor. In the desktop scene it doesn't matter because a mobo is like 100$. In the laptop scene it's quite a different story [unfortunately].

    I suspect you're right about their motives.

    Tom

    --
    Someday, I'll have a real sig.
  14. Yonah by momerath2003 · · Score: 5, Funny

    Many Dothans died to bring us this information.

    --
    I had but a simple dream, to destroy all humans.
  15. Re:Synopsis by anethema · · Score: 2, Insightful

    So will a athlon X2. At least it has all the technical requirements. Runs fine on a hacked OSX86.

    --


    It's easier to fight for one's principles than to live up to them.
  16. How much lunch can you eat? by FishandChips · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Just my 2 cents, but sooner or later the PC world needs to break away from this fixation on legacy desktop PCs with their Heath Robinson contraptions of wires, grouchy PSUs and naked circuit boards, not to mention size and noise. The line that caught my eye in this review: "A 2.0GHz Yonah under 100% load consumes less power than an Athlon 64 X2 3800+ at idle."

    Unless it is for gaming or for special and demanding applications, who needs all this muscle? A few more steps in the Yonah development line and we may be able to see PCs that are far smaller, quieter and more frugal with the juice while still packing a punch.

    None of this means that the Ahtlon 64 isn't darn good, only that it is not appropriate for many computing situations. Right now, Yonah looks more like a stab at tomorrow whereas the Athlon 64 represents the apogee of yesterday.

    --
    Las qué passoun
    tournoun pas maï
  17. Re:JAS: Just another socket by sznupi · · Score: 2, Informative

    Socket A lasted very long. I bought a mobo on it when the socket came out in 2000, MSI K7T Pro based on Via KT133. And it would be possible to use even Athlon XP 3200+...only problem: it would work at half the FSB, so half the speed. But it would work...
    "Unfortunatelly" 2 years later powersurge killed it, together with Duron 600, so as a replacement I ended with MSI K7T Turbo2. And this thing supports everything from Duron 600 to Athlon XP 2600+ (the one on 266 FSB). And of course latest Socket A mobos support everything from Duron 600 all the way up to 3200+ on 400 MHz FSB.

    And BTW, Pentiums are much worse example than Socket A - 60/66 MHz models, later normal models and MMX models weren't exactly compatible...

    --
    One that hath name thou can not otter
  18. Nonono. by jd · · Score: 2, Funny

    Yonah was the one that didn't follow the programmed instructions and was eventually consumed by Wales.

    --
    It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
  19. Yonah is a 32-bits only CPU by Eukariote · · Score: 2, Insightful

    The review fails to mention that, unlike AMD's current mobile Turion CPUs, the upcoming Yonahs will not run 64-bit code. What is Intel thinking? With 64-bit OS and software support increasingly available, who will want to invest a lot in such a laptop? Yet dual-core laptops are supposed to be high-end, and, being a more expensive investment, ought to last longer.

    1. Re:Yonah is a 32-bits only CPU by MarcQuadra · · Score: 4, Informative

      It's for several reasons:

      1. There is no real support for Windows x64, there's no virus protection and very few device drivers. Why go out of your way to support 1% of your users who would actually run a native 64-bit OS?

      2. Intel's 64-bit extensions actually slow their chips down. That's right, they added 64-bit instructions to their microcode, but they still get broken down to the same old instructions on the i686 core that the old ones did, and the 64-bit ones take longer to digest. It was a move for buzzword compliance only.
                Want to prove it? Get a pentium D830 machine, compile Gentoo on it, first a 32-bit install, then the AMD64 install. Compile both with the same options, but one with 32-bit instructions, and one with 64. The Intel 64-bit Linux will be slower than the 32-bit. The opposite is true with an AMD K8 chip, because the core was designed from step one to be 64-bit.

      3. Intel doesn't forsee you needing (or being able to fit) over 4GB of RAM in a portable or business desktop for several years, after the lifetime of this chip revision. If you insist on a 64-bit Intel chip, you must be running a server, workstation, or other high-end rig, so fess-up and buy an appropriately-classed chip (the D830, EE, or Xeon).

      4. They need to deliver this chip to market NOW, Intel's stronglest lead right now is with mobile platforms. These chips are in demand as-is; Apple and other vendors want them NOW, not in a few months with 64-bit extensions.

      --
      "Sometimes, I think Trent just needs a cup of hot chocolate and a blankie." -Tori Amos on Nine Inch Nails
  20. Re:Israel labs by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

    This is dead wrong.

    The WMT, NWD, PSC and CDM cores were developed in Oregon.
    The banias/dothan/yonah/merom cores are done in Israel.

    Intel's next generation Nehalem core is also developed in Oregon.

    That is all.

    -anonymous intel drone.

  21. The Book of Intel, chapter 4, verses 1-7 by H_Fisher · · Score: 5, Funny

    [1]In those days Da-than begat Yo-nah, which was the fruit of his circuitboard, strong by nature and a good processor. [2]Now Da-than looked on Yo-nah and said, "Yea shall I call you the Slayer of the Amd-ites, for thou shalt go out into their pastures and you shall slay their benchmarks utterly; [3]for thou art pleasing and art born of good silicon." [4]But Yo-nah saw, when he went out into the land of Cun-sumer, how despised he was among the buyers of chips; and he did gnash his teeth and beat his transistors saying: [5]"Oh wherefore was I not left dead on the test-bench and why was my die not broken the day I was born? [6]for I am inferior to my brethren the Amd-ites who run much better than I and cost way the hell less." [7]And he went out into the dust and wandered for a year, until the new product cycle taketh him away.

  22. Re:This is a laptop chip? by cnettel · · Score: 2, Insightful
    But their whole angle in this test was to test with desktop parts, in a machine with a normal 16x PCI-E GPU. Yonah, especially with both cores working at full speed, will consume far more power than Dothan. It will still consume less than the oxymoron of a mobile P4 and it will certainly do quite a bit better at calculations/watt, which is the only sensible number to look at when you consider the "maxing out" scenario.

    BTW, I'm impressed that you actually get useful charge when running CPU and GPU at 100 %. Most systems I've seen will trickle it down, sometimes for lack of power supply, sometimes due to the temperature situation in the battery.

  23. Re:This is a laptop chip? by javaxman · · Score: 2, Insightful

    um, that's a desktop disk, peripherals, USB devices, and GPU... and motherboard, not that it matters. They picked them ( well, everything but the mobo ) to match their previously benchmarked desktop system. If you were to actually build a laptop, the total system draw would very likely end up being less... heck, probably that GPU is a good percentage of the power draw.

  24. Re:Is this the chip Apple is using? by WMD_88 · · Score: 2, Interesting
    "An" Dimwit? You lost me there.

    To actually reply, these wouldn't be faster than the G4 if the G4 had a decent bus speed. But it's stuck at 167MHz. Double that, and G4 performance would go up almost as much, I bet.

  25. OS X without 64 bits? by MikeCapone · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Okay, I'm not a Mac guy and haven't followed this closely, but isn't OS X a 64 bit OS? Yonah won't be 64 bits (unlike the A64)... So, what's the deal? Did Apple just "downgrade" OS X to 32 bits for the x86 architecture?

    --
    Treehugger? Treehugger... Treehugger!
    1. Re:OS X without 64 bits? by Wesley+Felter · · Score: 3, Informative

      OS X is a 32-bit OS. It can run 64-bit applications, but there appears to be only one such app on the market: Mathematica.

      Also, current PowerBooks, iBooks, and minis use the 32-bit PowerPC G4, so a 32-bit Yonah is no worse.

    2. Re:OS X without 64 bits? by Ffakr · · Score: 4, Informative

      More specifically,
      OS X is mostly 32bit. 64bit libraries are available. You can run native 64bit integer math with the accelerate framework so you can do your fast, high-precision work on a G5.
      The big problem is, the GUI parts of the OS (most notably) are still 32bit. GUI apps must be 32 bit. Apps like Mathematica run kind of like X-Window.. they have a GUI and a mathematical engine running in the background. It's kind of client/server. Wolfram has a 64bit engine, but not a 64bit GUI but you don't need the GUI to be 64bit native.

      The problem is, other apps aren't logically de-coupled like this so it's difficult write these 32bit/64bit applications. The big issue, as I understand it, is that there needs to be a distinct separation of 32bit native and 64bit native code.. not just in spawned threads but in actual binaries that are compiled. In Mathematica, the front end is a separately compiled binary from the computation engine.

      ffakr.

      --

      I'm not feeling witty so bite me

    3. Re:OS X without 64 bits? by fitten · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Probably not for the user. As was said, this is a *huge* deal for many existing applications, though. Most applications are written GUI/engine together in the same program (just one program). If you would like 64-bits on OSX, many/most applications will have to be rewritten to seperate the GUI from the rest of the program and then made, as was described, more into a client/server type model. I imagine lots of Mac application writers are pretty pissed about it.

  26. Does dual core make sense for laptops? by mnemotronic · · Score: 2, Interesting

    There are a lot of other factors to "system performance", like memory, video, and disk subsystem speed. How much of a gain will a dual core CPU buy if the system is waiting for a (relatively) slow disk? If you want to put in a 7200 rpm 2 1/2", or a pair of 'em (or here), well ok. But then power consumption and it's cousin heat go up. Bigger batteries, Ok. Now you've got weight. I guess it's all about trade-offs, and what do you really want.

    --
    The Russians have won. They have made the world a cesspool of distrust, greed, fear and hate.
  27. Re:Israel labs by nofx_3 · · Score: 2, Informative

    You are correct sir. You can identify which chips were made in Israel because they are named after Israeli cities (Banias, Dothan, Yonah, and Merom). I don't recall the P-4 cores internal name, but it was not a city in Israel.

    --
    Visualize Whirled Peas