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News on Pentium IV
MotaK writes "Ace's Hardware and ARS-Technica has reported on PC Worlds article on the Willamette Processor, dubbed the P4. This proc. will apparently be only a 200Mhz frontside bus, and launch sometime in 2000. "
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Yes I am Bah Humbugging at christmas.... poo poo on me, but I am sick to death of the processor race. MOST apps runn fine on existing processors, and yes apps (and OS's) will continue to bloat, but I think both AMD and Intel need to spend more time on 64 bit processing power. As time goes on this will be the only way to fly.
www.mp3.com/Undocumented
Come on Intel, isn't it time to retire the Pentium name? As if Pentium II and III weren't bad enough, now we have to deal with the Pentium IV. Even Williamette would be a better name.
If it wasn't for the Itanium, they'd probably still be calling their chips Pentiums 10 years from now...
AMD has had a 200 MHz FSB since they released the Athlon. Intel is only now getting around to it. I also heard recently that in AMD's Dresden fabrication plant that they are turning out 1.2 GHz chips while Intel is only /talking/ about getting over a GHz (w/o cooling). I think that Intel's star is falling and that the Athlon's superior performance over the P3 was no fluke. (Also that is one mighty unoriginal name)
Pentium IV? What happens when we get past Pentium V? Will Intel's numbering system keep adding on digits?
Does this mean that by 2010 people will be running Pentium V Penta Five 3's?
Sargent
If the money had been put into decent development, we might be seeing high-speed, 64-bit, dynamically configurable processors -today-.
(As it is, we'll have to wait another 3 or 4 weeks for Transmeta to release theirs.)
Alternatively, we could have seen, for the same cost as developing a new processor, Intel, or one of the other premier chip companies, experiment with preparing silicon or gallium-arsonide in microgravity. A slow-cooled batch, under those conditions, would be near flawless, and allow for some serious clock-speeds. And people -would- buy! I'm sure of it!
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)
The new lines of processors focus WAY too much on the actual speed of the thing, mainly because that's the first (and sometimes only) thing people look at when they buy a computer..."Never mind that it only has a 33mhz bus, it's a 750mhz processor!"...The creators should focus on reducing power consumption, upping the bus, or making other parts more efficient.
-You're wearing...A bag? I have misplaced my pants.
I know it's not strictly on topic, but has anybody else noticed that the stories in the Slashdot Ars-Technica box haven't been updated in weeks?
Wow, news about news about news! Keep flying around the web like this, and it starts to resemble a sick game of Operator!
"Tom's said that Ars' said that ZDNet said that Wired said that PCWorld said that Jane's said that... Corel is buying Amiga? Woo-hoo!"
Seriously-- should Intel be concerned about the Japan market and their 4-aversion? Are they going to call it the Pentium III+?
Does this mean that my 999Mhz Craptronics i386 will not run my Microsoft BloatOffice faster then ever? ;)
I think we should start asking computer salesmen to see the SPEC95 ratings of the chips and see what they do. : )
-Sean
Honestly, it's like shooting a fish in a barrel. Twice. With an Elephant Gun. At point blank range. In the head. -
As much as it may be cool to have a 200 MHZ FSB, what will you do with it if your memory is 100 Mhz? I actually own a K7 (FSB = 200 MHz) and don't even think my board/CPU will let me use 133 MHz RAM (that is, without a soldering iron). Anyone knows about 200 Mhz SDRAM???
Opus: the Swiss army knife of audio codec
Intel is now playing catch-up with AMD. The Athlon should be the first to work with a 200Mhz bus, and they are working to put the cache on the chip, just like the old P-Pro's. This should be a big smack upside Intel's head. Intel is going to have to get in gear if they want to stay the leader in PC chip manufacturing.
I stole this sig from a more creative user.
This is the dreaded Athlon killer that is going to put AMD out of business. Sell your AMD stock now and enjoy the profits while you can, Chipzilla is on a rampage!
Be afraid, be very afraid... of chip "errata"!
From Intel, analysts expect 800-MHz PIII chips during the second quarter, and the Pentium IV chip, code-named Willamette, by the end of the year. Willamette is expected to handle more simultaneous instructions than the PIII, and to break the 1-GHz barrier. The accompanying chip set will likely support a 200-MHz system bus, like the Athlon's.
The AMD Athlon has Intel scared speechless. AMD now has the lead; Intel must announce something, anything.. Last night while surfing cable TV I came across a Home Shopping Channel which was selling complete AMD Athlon systems for $1500. Not only that, but they were really pitching Athlon as the world's fastest IA86 processor. Lot's of graphs, benchmarks, and carnival style barking. Ouch! That smarts!
I also must express my grave doubts that Intel will be able to ship a PIV in the year 2000. From what I've heard, they are really pushing CISC as far as it can go, and they're having a lot of engineering-type trouble (the PIV allegedly draws huge amounts of power). I really don't expect to see a stable system based on the Pentium IV until mid-2001. But that's just my opinion; I could be wrong. Anyhow, give me an Athlon or a G4 over a Pentium anyday. 'Specially when them LiuxPPC folk get some Velocity Engine support for the apps
I couldn't disagree more with what they write:
"Itanium won't be relevant for PCs until 2003 at the earliest, more likely 2005,"
Especially because their main argument is:
"Software has yet to be written or recompiled to accommodate a 64-bit processor. "
So, they really think that Microsoft will be able to hold back computer progress once again? Last time, there were no alternatives. You would run 16-bit dos, like it or not, but now we have choice and freedom.
If Microsoft doesn't move fast on this one, they'll be losing market shares on the server end of things in no time, and increasingly rapidly on the desktop too.
If they move fast, however, they will have to abandon their huge installed base and start at the same level as anyone else. It would be dangerous position for a company that has never excelled at quality and innovation.
I think 64-bit architectures may very well turn into Bill Gates' Waterloo; and it will all be over before we know it.
Does Intel think we're supposed to be excited about this? By the time they get that processor out the door, AMD will be at 1.2GHz+ with the Athlon. Check out the benchmarks with that absurd and immature RDRAM they're trying to push on us.
Get a clue, Intel.
I'm always in a bit of shock after I talk with people that are relative newbies (ie, less knowledgable than us folk :) about computers. They'll tell me something like "I got the 12.2 gig RAMs with a 15" drive and 256 of cache. Of course, it's a Pentium III. They're the fastest, you know."
Explaining that the speed increase between a P2 and a P3 is negligible doesn't seem to help any. They just know that they've got to have that "III," they have to have that "MMX" on there.
I wonder how much longer it will continue like this? Remember the rabid VCR market in the late 80s and early 90s? Maybe it was just my young geek mind, but it seemed to me that there was always some new feature, some great reason to upgrade to the next great generation of VCRs.
Where has that gone? In part, DVDs have increased the upgrade crazy, to be certain. But, if we go back a couple of years, you'll notice a laid-back attitude about these simple devices. "Does it record? Good enough." Again, this might just be my perception.
This same pattern has been repeated with radios, telephones, TVs (to some extent), coffeemakers, refrigerators, and just about any other overpriced gadget that you can think of. They become a commodity.
Is the processor industry going to drive itself into commodity status? I assume so. No doub t that you and I will keep right on upgrading and getting the biggest backside cache and fastest motherboard speed that we can. But as computers are reduced to appliance status, consumers won't care about whether it's a P3 or a P4. They'll just want to know if it's "on the e-mail."
Oddly, no mention of the Alpha, which I expect will end up owning the 64 bit arena for the foreseeable future. Why wait 'til 2003 for 64 bit performance when you can get it today? And the alpha today will probably be faster than Intel's deliveries years from now.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
What can the average person expect to see out of this? Not much, that's for sure. Maybe their MP3s will compress a little faster... I've got nothing against speed (a lot of places still need much more of it) but it's something that the Desktop PC market just doesn't have any use for any more of.
What we need now is innovation. Speed could only take us so far, now we need a brilliant flash of insight into making computing different... Better. What's the next step?
Use that speed. Better voice recognition. Artificial Intelligence systems that can figure out the difference between what the user says, and what the user wants. A machine that understands subtleties... a 3D desktop environment. Wireless T1-level access across the nation. WHY ARE WE STILL COMPUTING LIKE WE DID A DECADE AGO?
-----------
"You can't shake the Devil's hand and say you're only kidding."
I think the author of the PCWorld article has Windoze on the brain. When the Merced chips hit the streets you can BET that there will be a Redhat distro for it the same month (if not the same day).
It may be true that you won't be able to get Win200X (Specially built for Pentium IV! Upgrade today!) for quite some time, but the folks that just need to recompile like Linux, or BSD, will be there instantly. Slashdot itself has run the articles on Linux booting off a Merced simulator, and GCC being ported to run as well.
With Transmeta, 1.2 GHz Athalons, and Merceds coming out, next year should be very interesting.
Maybe they're just holding out...
Really, I'm hardly an AMD supporter but this is like saying "ford will release a car in 2001 that may perform as well as last year's chevy". My next CPU is a 1ghz athlon... I'm done with Intel. For now.
It is going to get really interesting soon even for the people who understand computers better, as we will find that are choices are opening up. How are we, the folks in the "know" going to convey to those not so technically minded what all of this really means? The human mind tends to grasp 5 plus or minus 2 strange things before it starts to overload. There was once a time (1992 or thereabouts) when I could fit advice in the form of:
1) High MHz
2) Intel-based CPU
3) not Packard-Bell
4) high RAM
5) more hard-drive space is good
6) get CD-Rom
7) latest version of DOS/Windows
Now there are so many factors to take into account that I almost have to walk my computer-illiterate friends through the process of buying a computer. It doesn't look like this is getting any easier either. In the "old days", the person usually got at least 4 of the above criteria right, and was OK. *Sigh*
As we continue along this path, it is great for optimizing our tools, but we leave the general populace farther and farther behind. If only there WERE an unbiased metric that people could use to diagnose their needs compared to the products offerings... Maybe there is and I am simply not aware of it.
B. Elgin
B. Elgin
"Read at your own risk; feel free to ignore."
Well, gosh guys, no wonder intel chips are slower than AMD chips. They run Roman Numerals for crying out loud. It probably takes a few more clock cycles to add XX, IV, M and then divide by V than to use that pesky binary stuff.
Personally, I am waiting for the Pentium XXVII, which should be a real screamer.
Kind of a kooky statement from this article. Sure, there may still still be 16-bit code in Windows in 2003, or 2005... the rest of the world will be recompiling their distributions ASAP.
I don't care how fast I get an answer if it's the WRONG answer, I can get wrong answers with a pencil and paper for $0.05
If you're going to buy Intel, buy celerons. If you're going for raw power, buy an Alpha (or a Tera). If you're a businessperson trying to build a scalable, reliable, mission critical system, and think WIntel is the way to go, I'm not going to tell you otherwise... Sorry AMD, I gotta get my kicks somewhere 8^>
The totally gutless, and completely anonymous,
-Coward
DEICIDE = I DECIDE
I've never heard of this before. Please enlighten me/us. :-)
paranoid.android
Athlon really doesn't yet have a chipset to run with. Sure, there is the AMD chipset, but it is far from what could be done.
Once the KX133 chipset from VIA is available (provided it's not a complete dud) and once KX133 motherboards start to appear, Athlon's lead over Intel would look much uglier (for Intel). That should happen by Jan '00. I would expect that with the proper chipset the whole-system performance advantage of Athlons vs Pentiums would be very very noticeable.
Note to Intel: it's not time to panic yet, but recommend going on yellow alert.
Kaa
Kaa
Kaa's Law: In any sufficiently large group of people most are idiots.
Hmm, I've already been using a P5 for quite a few years already. I'll hold out a bit longer.
Yeah, and by that logic, I'll also assume that a Macintosh G3 is faster than an IBM G2 mainframe. Heh heh.
"Twice half-assed makes an ass whole." --Solomon K. Chang
I'm sick of all this hoopla over these processor races. Its like thats all that important. How about the recent shake up in the domain registration world. I mean the network solutions monopoly has been broken! If you don't believe me just visit this site www.npsis.net and check out the going price of a domain name these days. Now that is NEWS!! Now guys like me (the poor folk who actually work for their money) can afford a lousy domain name. Come on people lets stop focusing all are attention on the processor race and look at other more significant events that are happening with the internet and the world every day.
"...this addition to the PIII design is responsible for supercharging Microsoft Office apps."
For some reason, I had trouble taking the rest of the article seriously after I read this line.
Weblogging Considered Harmful:
From what I've read/heard, Williamette has a 100 mhz QUAD pumped fsb. I thought originaly that it was 200 mhz Double pumped, but a friend of mine working at Intel was telling me that it's 100 mhz quad pumped. For you non technical people, thats the equivalent of a 400 mhz FSB.
Here is a good place to start looking for ideas -- notice that Itanium was registered a while back...
--
E2 IN2 IE?
For immediate release:
The Inhell Pentagram processor, 666 Mhz. Sure it runs hot, but there is no need for cooling (cold day in hell? Ever seen one?)
You have never seen daemons dance so fast.
(Holy water user protection not included.)
Try to hack my 31337 firewall!
Pentium IV - big deal. I won't bother getting excited until Transmeta releases their Crusoe thingmabub on Jan 19. Maybe then there'll be something worth getting excited about! Now is not the time to buy a new machine.
This is a posting experiment, please ignore
I've been hearing that Intel is going to start using the PPGA (Socket 370) format for more of their CPUs, such as the PIII soon. Has anyone else heard this rumour? If so, I would really love to find out when this is expected to happen
aka, PentiuMM.
Pope
It doesn't mean much now, it's built for the future.
Questions: What speed will this debut at? 600 MHz, 800 MHz, 1 GHz? Will it basically just be a PIII with a faster FSB and core speed? Is there anything new in the "P4" architecture?
Alright now that that's out of the way, how about motherboards? Processor configuration - Socket 370, Slot x, something new? I'm really getting sick of Intel doing things like deciding that the new 370 Coppermines won't work in older 370 boards. The processor race has got to drop off sometime...
As a consumer, I just can't WAIT to get my hands on one, Intel. I'm just seething with anxiety over new features. Heaven forbid that they should f00f this one up.
Of course it's all simple mathematics, really. The more Intel rushes things, the more likely AMD will come out ahead.
:-)
Best regards,
SEAL
Intel reminds me of the american car companys during the 60's, They are increasing speed by bumping up the MHZ, kinda like bumping up desplacment, we need to see more efficient "import" processors.
Love, because they pump their money into the market where I intend to make my livelyhood when I graduate. Hate, because they allow themselves (and thus, a significant portion of the market) to be herded into crappy product land.
But hey, it's good to know that the stores where I shop all use Microsoft products, running on *genuine* Intel machines, because, um, yeah. Not like I could fix the radiator on my car, or the washing machine in my basement, but jeeezus, you gotta be dumb to fork over that much for an inferior product.
de toh-talli gahtless, an' com-pleetely a-nohnimus, Cowahd mon
All operating systems suck; the secret is not singeing your 8A11z on the uproc.
*yawn*
One thing that's going to be interesting to watch is Microsoft slowly realising that not only must the O/S be made 64 bit clean, ALL of their own and 3rd party apps will need to be cleaned up as well.
Kind of like a mini Y2K, programmers have been casting 32 bit pointers to 32 bit ints for way to long and when that pointer suddenly becomes 64 bits things start breaking.
64 bit Linux still needs some work, but we are WAY ahead :)
Tim
...Intel's latest Coppermine PIIIs have high clock speeds plus a 256KB on-chip secondary cache--and this addition to the PIII design is responsible for supercharging Microsoft Office apps.
What does this mean!?!? No other apps are supercharged by it? Only the Coppermine P3 supercharges M$Office?
First quarter: 800-MHz AMD Athlon
Second quarter: 800-MHz Intel Pentium III
Late second quarter: Intel 64-bit Itanium processors for workstations and servers
Late second quarter: Intel Timna for bargain PCs, Via chips for bargain PCs
Fourth quarter: 1-GHz AMD Athlon, 1-GHz Intel Willamette
Does it strike anyone else as odd that Intel is a quarter behind AMD now but they are promising the 1 Ghz processor at the same time? Sure, they could catch up, but I don't think they will so quickly.
Me, I'll stick with AMD. They make the upgrades I'm putting into my old systems, and they are making the Socket 7 processors that are inexpensive as hell. How about $160 to replace a motherboard and put in a 400Mhz K6-2!!! Not a gamer's box, sure, but one hell of a system for my home office users to check e-mail and browse the web!
Hello little man. I will destroy you!
You know I'm sick of all this hoopla over these processor races. Its like thats all that important. How about the recent shake up in the domain registration world. I mean the network solutions monopoly has been broken! If you don't believe me just visit this site www.npsis.net and check out the going price of a domain name these days. Now that is NEWS!! Now guys like me (the poor folk who actually work for their money) can afford a lousy domain name. Come on people lets stop focusing all are attention on the processor race and look at other more significant events that are happening with the internet and the world every day.
Nathaniel P. Wilkerson
www.haidacarver.com
The Pentium was developed because in 1993 we were in the depth of the worst recession since 1980 and engineers had two choices: work their asses off and get some major breakthroughs or join the thousands who were getting laid off. Since we don't have those pressures there's no need to develop anything new. Not until we have another crash like 1993 will there be anything phenomenal.
You know I'm really sick of all this hoopla over these processor races. Its like thats all that important. How about the recent shake up in the domain registration world. I mean the network solutions monopoly has been broken! If you don't believe me just visit this site www.npsis.net and check out the going price of a domain name these days. Now that is NEWS!! Now guys like me (the poor folk who actually work for their money) can afford a lousy domain name. Come on people lets stop focusing all are attention on the processor race and look at other more significant events that are happening with the internet and the world every day.
Nathaniel P. Wilkerson
www.haidacarver.com
I don't have the data for this handy, but it would be interesting to plot and extend trend lines to see when the roman numerals for Pentiums would pass the numbers for movie series like Star Wars, Star Trek, or Halloween.
Of course, there could be some crossover -- The Revenge of the Pentium, Pentium in Love, The English Pentium, The Pentium Redemption, Indiana Jones and the Holy Pentium, perhaps.
If you're stupid enough to shell out to Dell/Gateway/Compaq, Intel, AOL, and Microsoft, then you deserve what you get. And you deserve to spend $500+ on tech support from a high school kid (after which you deserve the fact that you STILL don't know what the hell is going on).
I do what the penguins in my head tell me to. Hey, at least I haven't worn out the hard power cycle toggle on my 'puter ;-)
P4. gimme a break... who needs backward compatibility with bloated useless proprietary suckware? Buy a Cyrix if you don't care about quality, at least they're inexpensive.
WELL, FUCK ME WITH A SHOVEL!!!
I can hadly see what the great news is about this. We still have to wait until the last quarter of next year before we even see it. What it seems to me is that the processor industry is milking the public for as much cash as they can before releasing a processor. ie it always seems to be steps of 50Mhz each few months. We all know that that the technology for 10 Ghz processors is out there, somewhere. All we need to do is entice the manufacters to look for how this is done. Anything is possible.. we should be looking to greater technology by making hugh leaps and bounds in mankind, rather than release processors that milk the peoples pockets for the extra 50Mhz etc etc so they can experience the internet in a whole new way blah. Maybe I am just saying this because my pockets are filled with lint. We should however applaud the manufacturers of transistors.. they have come along way and also communities that are doing it to greater mankind, not milk it.
I can hadly see what the great news is about this. We still have to wait until the last quarter of next year before we even see it. What it seems to me is that the processor industry is milking the public for as much cash as they can before releasing a processor. ie it always seems to be steps of 50Mhz each few months. We all know that that the technology for 10 Ghz processors is out there, somewhere. All we need to do is entice the manufacters to look for how this is done. Anything is possible.. we should be looking to greater technology by making hugh leaps and bounds in mankind, rather than release processors that milk the peoples pockets for the extra 50Mhz etc etc so they can experience the internet in a whole new way blah.
Maybe I am just saying this because my pockets are filled with lint. We should however applaud the manufacturers of transistors.. they have come along way and also communities that are doing it to greater mankind, not milk it.
Not anyone attribute does a good system make. However, the average joe consumer does not realise this. They are caught up in the malestrom of advertising and hoopla. Remember in the EARLY 80's when 300 baud modems were it, floppy disks were literal, and you were DAMN lucky to have color! Programer has very little to work with (looking back). They had to write tight efficient code or not at all. Now any fool can write a bit of code and processor speed makes it all even (on some levels). If MORE people who were writting usable code tighten it up, things would increase on their own. If people would take memory into consideration when writting, etc... I think the "I got a 12 gig HD for my PC" would also deminish. What we would be left with is an industry that would HAVE to make marked improvements. Instead of just jazzing up the existing material.
The wages of sin are unreported and back taxes are hell to pay.
News is news. People discuss all of it. It just happens that the processor race is a little more high profile. Quit crying. You read the article and posted a message, that says to me that you were interested in what it had to say. Unless you read it simply so you could cry about which stories are getting attention. Do you ever watch the news at night. Ever notice that they cover stories that people will tune in to see. There are a ton of big stories that get no coverage becuase the people publishing the stories don't think they will recieve enough attenetion. It just so happens that a lot of people on slashdot are interested and want to discuss the processor wars ( that sounds like a great title for a trilogy, but i digress ). So take a valium and go cry somewhere else!
Too bad AMD has better chips on the market right now. Intel is lagging in R&D and AMD is picking up the slack. As for selling your stock in AMD, if you do, do it because Transmeta *might* in six months time take some market share from them, Intel is on its way down (except they make lots more the processors so are a pretty stable stock).
For a start I was a little un-impressed with the article. The news item had me expecting some specific information but the article had few specifics.
Several of the posts here I've read seem to imply that AMD is soon to get the upper hand and that Intel is playing catch up. This is unlikely to be true for the foreseable future, the lead Intel has will stay with us for a while yet regardless of the competition.Here are some of the biggest issues surrounding the market.
Intel Brandname: Many of you will remember that not that many years ago only the total techies like us actualy new who made the processor inside your computer, the brand was the manufacturer, how many of you today know who made the chips in your mobilefone? your pda? your wristwatch? your microwave oven? Intel changed all this with an extensive and heavy duty branding efort (The Intel Inside stickers, the TV adverts and all that). AMD has not got a brand name anything like as big as intel, the general public 'Knows' that Intel is the best even when it isn't.
AMD Will slash Athlon Prices: This is one of the biggest misconceptions about, for a long time AMD has been known for being the cheap option, not because they could design or makes the chips vastly cheaper than Intel but becuase they had to cut costs to compete. This all changed with the Athlon that for the first time put them ahead in the performance stakes, the Athlon price is now in the same bracket as the Intel chips and it can't cut the prices by mutch, the development costs have really cut into their revenue to the point that they have no choice but to compete on a level price playing field. That leaves AMD fighting only on the performance and branding front's and they only have edge in one of those areas.
AMD Has The Performance Advantage: True, but for how long. Many people have said that AMD has now proved they can make better processors and will continue to have the edge. This is not necisarily true, Intel is very large with vast resources. Basicly AMD have cought Intel napping, for far to long Intel has has a clear lead in the field and they have got more than a little complacement. The Intel Brandname will only cary them for so long, Intel knows they will have to fight to regain the performance edge, and Intel knows how to fight. I am reminded of the over quoted Admiral Yamamoto after pearl harbor "We have awakened a sleeping giant and have instilled in him a terrible resolve". And I'm sure you americans will be quick to point out that not eveyone caught napping is the inferior side.
Natalie Portman: Has nothing to do with this issue.
Why the headline for this particular artcicle? This article is about CPU and CPU technology and only mentions Willamate in 2 sentences and even then they are vauge and not quite right. First of all teh Willamate is the code name for Intel's "desktop version" of the IA64 and second, it's not likely to come out till late 2000 or early 2001. Anything more and you're just guessing, it might be at a .13 micron process or it might not be. It might use copper or it might not. It's probably safe to say it'll start at around 1GHz but anything we hear about Willamate for at least the next six months will be nothing more than wild speculation.
Why are you getting sick of the processor race? It seems to me that we are constantly in search of more power for our computers, and the chip manufacturers are giving us what we want. If you had to wait 12 months for a new chip, with a speed increase of say 200Mhz, you would be complaining. The computer industry is by its very nature a fast paced industry, and therefore, us getting new chips every 3 months is comparable to a car manufacturer bringing out a product update every 2 years.
I want to see cheap desktop multiprocessor machines. I mean when you need one pound aluminum heat sink, three fans, CPU heat alarms, and soon pumped liquid and radiators, something is FUNDAMENTALLY wrong with your design. Lots of small lower-power processors working in tandem seems a better way to get more MIPS out of your tower case than trying to find new ways to vent heat. Just look around you. Life didn't really take off until multicelled organisms formed. Could a 150 pound eucaryotic cell ever be equivalent in abilities to a human? Of course not! It's a stupid idea!
Oh behave, thats worth worth more than a 1, thats a bloody valid comment. Bastards
When your small, you fight the bigger capitalist by creating better products and overshadowing them. You win. AMD :).
believes they won, maybe they have, but they wont be saints, or demons (or daemons
I read a while ago and im pretty sure it still holds true. AMD has a better product, but they only have a small farction of the sales, like 10%. Intel has had absolute power for a long time. AMD still has a tough road to climb, and now they don't have the element of surprise.
I AM NOT AS I CRAZY AS I THINK I AM! or am i??? -GODriel
Only dead fish swim with the stream...
Remember, it still has a PSN. I'm thinking the average consumer forgot all about it, and they will buy them still. Remember to tell people about the PSN and see what they decide then.
Enough with the oxymoronic names already! "Pentium IV"? Please. You'd think that Intel could make it's chip names correspond a little better to chip differences, too. The only significant difference between a PII and a PIII is the (little used) SSE support, whereas you have to shop carefully between PIII releases to make sure you get one of the uber-cache "Coppermine" (disclaimer: no copper included) models that actually can compete with an Athlon.
It's a shame that Pentium IIIs, while invariably poor consumer buys, are still doing well because of marketing. Want a cheap computer? Get a Celeron. Want a fast computer? Get an Athlon, which will outrun any PIII of the same price.
A neighbor of mine got their first computer last Christmas. Maybe my advice got there too late, because their overpriced, unstable Compaq PII system was coupled with a lousy ATI video card and a winmodem. I had the pleasure last month of trying to figure out driver problems with someone's dual PIII, 128MB (or was it 256?) RAM, Voodoo 3 3500, behemoth system... that was having conflicts with his ISA network card.
Granted, there are a lot of CPU-intensive things (Quake 3 - intense!) out there I'd love to have an 800Mhz Athlon for, but those are the exception (Quake 3 - exceptional!) rather than the rule. (Quake 3 rules!)
And even in 3D games, we're getting to the point where the processor won't be the limiting factor anymore. I mean, once you're getting 60fps at 1024x768, do you shoot for 90fps? No, you crank up your resolution, detail, or color depth. And once you do that you're worrying about your video card's fill rate, texture memory, or texture RAM bandwidth, not about your CPU. Hell, with T&L going on new video cards, we're going to be at the point where the AGP bus and human perception are the limiting factors on visual quality, not the CPU. Maybe games like Halo will have ultra-impressive physics and AI to use all those CPU cycles, but I'd like to see it.
Granted, there are always going to be applications (if only Beowulf clusters) where CPU value increases linearly with CPU speed.. but these are niche things compared to the huge consumer market being sold to today.
What I want to see isn't faster CPUs, it's broadband access! I have a K6II on a 10baseT college dorm connection this year, and if I have to trade it for a quad 1.2Ghz Athlon on a 56K modem when I graduate, it's not going to be a good trade. Whoever thought up Intel's "our CPU makes the internet faster!" campaign should be flogged.
AMD Will slash Athlon Prices: This is one of the biggest misconceptions about
The Athlon 600 is retailing for as little as $379 now, about half of what they were at four months ago. Granted, it wasn't in one dramatic price slash, but it's a hell of a drop. AMD has kept the Athlons cheaper and faster than same-Mhz PIIIs forever, and I don't see that changing soon. Maybe Intel will get ahead in the Mhz war, but that won't change the market situation for people not buying the absolute fastest chip.
A bunch of scientist have been working on compilers for EPIC processors for quite some time now.
Check out the Trimaran project. They have a version for Linux.
Actually, AMD has a DDR 100Mhz bus. It transfers data on the rising and falling of the clock. Effectively it's about the same.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
(Scene: Two EMTs roll a Computer Expo member in)
Doc: What's the story?
EMT: He was found down at Computer Expo unresponsive. We've been unable to get a pulse, respirations, or a TCP/IP stack out of him.
(Doc surveys the scene. Several EMTs are performing CPR, and a couple are attemting to find the proper Cntrl-Alt-Del on his person. Doc notices a few electronic devices on the patient's belt.)
Doc: We've got to get a line now! This guy needs Pentium - IV!
Badum dum.
Linux - Because Mommy taught me to Share.
The marketting division is serious diluting the brand name "Pentium"
Let's look:
"Pentium" -- a decent 5th gen proc.
"Pentium with MMX" -- Should've been Pentium+, it contained important L1 cache enchancements (P166 w/ MMX outperforms plain P200, etc).
"Pentium Pro" -- Why not a new name, like P2? This is a 6th generation code.
"Pentium ][" -- Finally, a proper increase in number. Pretty much the same core, but with cache slower.
"Pentium ]I[" -- Well, there are two kinds of P3. Ones which have KNI, and no other changes. And the P3 which does have KNI, but which also has faster/less L2 cache, and other important tweaks. They rushed the Pentium 3 "name" out the door to get people buying what is essentially the same chip, which not as much as a performance grab as the Pentium w/MMX over the original Pentium. Not to mention serial numbers (oy vey).
Now they have the "Pentium IV".. Does anyone else think it's just wrong to have 5 separate chips based on the same cores when, in the same span in the 1980s, Intel was actually inovating and took us through the 80186 (used on controller boards), the 80286, and the 80386 (with the prototype 486 chips just out the door 10 years ago). It seems that rather than reacting with the inovation they had of the 1980s, they are reacting with the Marketting Dodos who brought us "I was born to web!".
If you'll let me indulge in a little metaphor, Intel is currently roping a nice little noose around its neck, with the word "Marketting" written on it. AMD is currently moving in to kick the chair out from under Intel. Anyone wanna buy some Intel stock?
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Internet Explorer (n): Another bug -- that is, a feature that can't be turned off -- in Windows.
In fact, they could add some speech recognition extensions to it and call it the oral sexium, I'd like to see AMD top that.
the fact that computers are still comming
with 32 megs of ram. I mean c'mon!!
I've been shopping for a dirt cheop lapotop
and I've come close to finding ones, but
they allways just miss the mark because the
company opts for adding a few more mhz and keeping
the ram low, (i.e. 400mhz celeron with 32 meg
of ram). I would rahter have a 266 with 64 or 128 than a 500 with 32.
Anyways, if anybody knows where I can get laptops like this, let me know (for around 1,250 or so)
ok here's the reason why it's called the Pentium IV instead of something else. The Pentium as you all know was preced by the 486 and before that the 386, 286, etc. They couldn't call it the natural 586 because I think cyrix took the name first. Pent is the root for 5th generation (pentagon, pentagram, etc). What comes after Pentium? Sextium. OK. I think it's obvious why Intel can't use that name. So what if they decide to skip 6 and go to 7? Septium which sounds like a septic tank. Intel is really stuck right now.
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No way! It really does make the Internet go faster. Case study: My computer. I had a PII at home on a 56K modem, and then went off to college and bought a PIII, which is much faster on the 10/T campus network...
Actually, I don't think flogging would be sufficient.
On another note, why is it that Intel always does the real improvements in their processers in the middle of a series, instead of between series? Like Coppermine. I think it would have made more sense to not call anything a P3 name until Coppermine instead of 'ooh we have streaming SIMD'. Okay, I'm done now.
I'm going to live forever or die trying.
As I understood it, the Pentium was called the Pentium because of a copyright dispute with Cyrix years ago. Cyrix produced it's own 386, and Intel tried to sue them on the grounds that 386 was copyrighted by Intel. Intel was told that numbers cannot by copyrighted.
Once Intel was ready to release their 586, the decided to give it a name, and they decided on Pentium (from penta, meaning five).
Then the Pentium 2 came along, which according to what I know is a 686. I just assumed that they didn't call it a Sextium becase some idiot would think that Intel was out to corrupt the morals of our children.
Now the Pentium 3 is out, and it is supposedly a 786. Why it's not called a Sentium I do not know.
Now we have a Pentium 4 on the way. Shouldn't it be called an Octium?
"Reality is less than television."-Brian Oblivion
"Intel Processor 2000"
(sorry, couldn't resist...)
"Nobody will ever need more than 640k of Ram."
Hm. Little problem with the sig there. Guess everyone knows that was my first post here now, don't they?
*sigh*
"He who breaks a thing to find out what it is has left the path of wisdom." --Gandalf the Grey
The rest of the world will be trying to pry out all the 32-bit croft in Linux.
Let's take a look for a second at Intel's chip names...
8086 -- Intel's first big 16-bit processor
80286 -- Intel's next 16-bit processor - name is known also as 8x286, shortened to the 286 (easier to call it the 286 rather than the 80286)
Pentium -- Intel finally feels that a name's better than a number. Many laugh at the name, but soon the term 586 becomes associated only with AMD.
Pentium Pro -- Again, another attempt to use words to describe power
Pentium II -- A legitimate upgrade to the Pentium in chip architecture (586 to 686) and in the name.
Up to that point, Intel's had a good strategy for naming things. But look at the Pentium III! Ther'es no big change in architecture except for a few instruction extensions, but they upgrade it from II to III! Why? Promotion. No other reason. It's really pathetic.
Pent- means five. It was named for the 586. That was back five years ago, and the name is just too old in technology years. It needs to be changed to something other than the "Pentium IV," but with their last name change from Merced to Itanium, I'm worried what they might come up with!
I'm not convinced that this is likely; Digital has long had some pretty good products, but have lately had an inability to sell their way out of a wet paper bag.
The recently announced Compaq/Samsung venture to put effort back into Alpha may be helpful, if they actually provide powerful product for decent value. It's not clear that they're likely to out-market Intel, which is a critical issue.
This connects doubly to AMD:
I suspect their choice needs to be between third-sourcing Alphas or creating an "IA-64 clone."
The former merely makes them a "me too" vendor; the latter runs the risk of running afoul of Intel patents and/or other "design license" restrictions.
I am at a loss to decide which outcome is more likely.
The common thing is the memory access protocol, which implies very little about there being any other interoperability between Athlon and Alpha.
If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the precipitate.
People have been saying that about every Intel chip since the PPro. Quit being such a cynic, and push your "mid-2001" figure back into your ass.
Hands in my pocket
Not picking or anything, it's just so you'll know.
"Pentium 13" wouldn't raise any eyebrows. However, "Pentium 666" just feels wrong.
Hands in my pocket
Progress!
Imagine all the sweet web pages you'll be able to view with one of those puppies. That alone will be well worth the $1000 they'll be charging for it in the beginning...
The AMD 200MHz FSB used on the Athlon is a point-to-point bus. The Intel 133MHz FSB used on the Pentium III is a shared bus. They each have their own advantages and disadvantages. Point-to-point busses are inherently faster, while shared busses enable easy SMP. It's easy to say that "Intel is only now getting around to it [a 200MHz FSB]" but in truth, AMD's bus is not as amenable to a quick SMP solution - where are the multi-processor Athlons? If this supposed 200MHz FSB for the Willamette is a 4-stub shared bus it will be quite an achievement since these are quite tricky to design.
It's true that the person that is spending the money rarely knows what they have bought when it comes to computers. But what you are missing is that these clueless buyers have knowledgeable friends that scope everyting out for them before the purchase is made.
ayottesoftware.com
How did this comment get an overrated moderation. It was at score 1, it hadnt been rated at all. Is that just a convenient way to attack people when you dont agree with them? "I dont have an intelligent response, but look here, I have a moderation point left over. Lets mark him down because I have big corporations like Intel and he is putting down my AMD."
-- All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. -- Edmund Burke
I am always amused by the price differences between the fastest processors and ones that are 50 to 100 Mhz slower. The marginal speed gain is negligable, but people still seem to fork over the cash. Let's do some math. (800 Mhz + 800 Mhz) > 1,000Mhz. I don't know about you, but I'll be LMAO when I'm running BeOS on dual (or quad) 800's when Joe Smoe is selling organs so he can run Windows on a new 1Ghz (ONE GIGAHERTZ!?! That chips has just got to be soooo much faster...) machine.
Life is pain. Anyone who says otherwise is selling something.
The source for several old Digital Research products, including CP/M and GEM, has been released by Caldera. It's available at http://www.mathcs.emory.edu/~cfs/cpm/.
To heck with cheaper domains. We need more TLD's!
.com domain worth anything nowadays without it being a verydarnlongsentence.com domain.
.com, we need some spread, and not just to various country's domains either.
I think the price of domains should be at least $100-200/year, to slow down the wanton grabbing. Good luck finding a
I wouldn't mind seeing the following top level domains:
.sex (obvious here)
.ind (or something for individuals)
.grp (generally nonprofit, but not really organizations)
.bam (for 3D shooter nets)
.mud (muds, moos, mushes)
.lnx (Linux-specific sites)
.bsd (same, but for BSD)
.bbr (sites which stick cross-site tracking cookies on your browser like doubleclick and imgis)
Instead of trying to stuff everyone in
This is just a random thought. Instead of a stronger, and stronger central processor, why not add a heavily-CPU'able on each SIMM, then stick all these chips on a wide as heck backplane. SIMM A wants to talk with drive B, it does, and doesn't interfere with SIMM C dumping video to DSP D. IBM's AS/400 used to have tons of subsystems like this. It was an IBM-only design, but sticking processers on everything really does help. This is one of the reasons the Amiga (for its time) shone at graphics and sound.
The only 32-bit code running on my linux/alpha box is netscape.
When Itanium comes out, it is going to be an ULTRA high end processor used for massively parallel supercomputers (by SGI at least), and high end servers and workstations. It's going to cost big, big bucks, and it will be a number of years before the IA64 architecture has any significant impact on the home PC user. IA64 will be irrelevant to you and me, except for talking about, untill around 2005 I'd say.
He said, "You'll be able to tell your grandchildren that you helped assemble the first NT supercomputer," and I cringed.
I spent October in Hong Kong and mainland China, and none of the buildings there have 4th or 14th floors because the word for 4 is also the word for death.
Of course, Intel will try its best to bring out every conceivable processor between the current 733 and 1.0GHz model just to make money. They ALREADY HAVE the 1.2GHz ready to go. It would be so much easier just to release the IA-64 with a bus that equalled the Rambus memory at 800MHz already out. Unfortunately, they can't do this because it would leave tire tracks all over AMD and the DOJ will be all over Intel's CEO. Processor speeds and technology in general is being surpressed just to please government regulators and make a few more bucks on the side. What they don't realize is that it's pissing off the users. I want an IA-64 with an 800MHz bus and a few gigs of Rambus memory.
Linux forever!
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IMHO, of course.
May the SOURCE be with you.
I wonder if Intel keep the pentium and roman numeral system, are they going to skip the XXX fo obvious reason? just like they skip the 666Mhz and go to 667Mhz, oh welll... I am thinking collectible item here. specially if there is lawsuit by the porn industry...
I'm still waiting to see the necessary chipset support for AMD's processors, especially multiple-processors. While MP is not everything, two processors do make for a nice increase in speed, especially if you run Linux or BeOS.
It is going to be interesting to see the interplay between Via as *the* chipset producing company for AMD, as well as competing with AMD with their Joshua processor.
So, what about speed? Well, a lot of that speed is going to be used to make scripting faster. Sure, we don't *need* it, but hardly anyone wants to code to the bare metal anymore. Today is the day of Perl, TCL and Sun pretending that JAVA is relevant. Languages are getting easier, and therefore slower... Fairly soon, we might not even bother, nor need to bother, to compile most applications.
Even assuming tightly optimized code, don't be quick to overlook things such as voice recognition, hand-writing recognition, and searching, as three of the things I can think of for improved mhz. When you are playing Tribes 2, wouldn't you like to talk with your teammates via voice instead of typing? And without sapping your already limitted bandwidth? Not to mention how nice it would be to have in cars, and for presentations (saying "next" or waiting for the pause, instead of having to walk over and hit a key). Handwriting analysis is similar in many ways to the computational requirements for voice recognition. And searching, with the ability to compensate for "close" matches, is going to require a decent amount of computation.
Not to mention that for "servers", which can be your consumer level Pentium4 or whatever running in a dual configuration, serving intranet pages, you are going to likely do a lot more encryption, which will presumably use any shiny new instructions with this new processor. Given Intel's past commitments to Linux, I'd expect to see versions of OpenSSL incorporating tightly optimized assembly routines using any new instructions.
Finally, marketting. In two words: It works. Just like Coke vs Pepsi, where name recognition is everything, the Pentium name has become widely known outside the computer-literate. While the technical issues are hard to qualify (sure, your Alpha will crush my Pentium3 in SpecFP, but I can sure crank out more RC5 than you can... :) ), things like brand name and megahertz numbers appeal to the people who don't have the time, nor inclination to research the issues.
Summary: if you are reading this, you know what to do with marketting. Speed is a *good* thing. And we live in interesting times...
This industry has a short memory. The Pentium was called the P5 for a long time, and the Pentium Pro core was generally called the P6. P4 seems like about the worst choice of things to call the Pentium IV.
If there is a 64 bit AMD CPU, called the K8, why isn't it listed on the AMD website as a product that they sell?
Reality is that There is no such product. "K8" has not been announced. Do a search at the AMD website and you will not find it.
AMD has announced something codenamed "Sledgehammer" but that was announced as a FUTURE PRODUCT.
And as far as the Athlon/Alpha motherboard interoperability, I'll believe it when I see it.
If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the precipitate.
Why can't the bus speed be the same as the processor? I remember in the 386 and early 486 days the bus and processor speed were the same. I honestly feel that if intel releases a processor at 1.2 Ghz for example, then the bus speed should be 1.2 Ghz, PCI needs to move from 66Mhz 64-bit to 400 or 500Mhz and 64-Bit, and AGP needs to move up to. Would this require a redesign of the architecture or is processor technology moving faster than everything else in a computer?
Or something like that, according to a former cow-orker of mine who knew a bit about classical languages. Penta- is from the Greek for five, and -ium is Latin. So it should have been Quinquium, or the Pentos, or something like that. On the other hand, the word "automobile" has the same problem.
A 1960's 440Ci v8 or a 1960's import 4 banger?
the v8 would
A 1999 440ci v8 or a 1999 4 banger?
the v8 wins again. There is no replacment for desplacment :)
I have to return some videotapes...
Invariably the followups to this sort of thread need some basic questions answered, so I've taken the liberty of provided this friendly QA sheet. Q.Who needs all that speed! Heck, my 386 with 4MB runs vi and elm just great, and with Lynx I got it made! It's that damn MS `bloatware'! A.A lot of us do a lot more than interact with 80x25 text consoles (hence why telnet servers aren't quite as big of a deal as Linux enthusiasts believe them to be). The more power the better! While anti-mainstreamists like to use vague, undefined terms like "bloatware", the reality is that modern software has a vast array of very useful features. You don't use all of them, but when you do there's no going back. Give someone a P-III 733 for a week and then put them back with a P-II 450. There are a huge array of revolutions with interfaces that can't even occur yet because the power isn't there. And I'm not even getting started on games...we aren't even touching the surface of what will come to be over the next decade. This will all be like looking back at Commander Keen 1. Q.Intel sucks! A.The numbers prove their prowess over and over again. I'm not a big Intel fan, and AMD is making some kick ass products now as well, however Intel processors keep kicking ass and proving themselves, and they're cost competitive as well. The classic "it's just a souped up 8086!" claims are quite dated and questionable. Q.Intel sucks! A.Here it is again. This is just the whole opposition to anything "Wintel"ish coming through. Q. Why aren't they using an XXX/YYY/ZZZ! A. Start up a chip company and you show them how to do it boys!
Whoever the retard was that moderated this down as "flamebait", I'd like to know why. Moderators here are bafflingly stupid sometimes.
More retarded moderation. I'm guessing it was the same person who moderated the one above it. Here's a fucking clue, Einstein: It's not "redundant" if what's being discussed hasn't been discussed before!
I'm guessing this particular moderator is an Intel employee... Or just really, really fucking stupid.
- A.P.
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"One World, one Web, one Program" - Microsoft promotional ad
"Remember when the U.S. had a drug problem, and then we declared a War On Drugs, and now you can't buy drugs anymore?"
I see many posts whining about why processor makers don't concentrate on upping the bus speed, reducing power consumption, etc etc etc... While this IS true for some, it seems many of the readers think Intel is the only CPU manufacturer out there. Why not move on to a better manufacturer instead of sticking with intel and whining about their problems? -a happy MIPS user...
This is a little bit off-topic, but the PCWorld article discussed the upcoming processors, and it set me to thinking. Intel is supposed to break out with the Itanium sometime in the second quarter of next year (add some usual production delays, and hopefully it'll be available by Christmas of the *real* millenium :-) ). It's a 64-bit processor, so could Linux be recompiled to take advantage of that capability? I know that Linux runs on 64-bit SPARCs, but I was just wondering if there are any plans to have Linux support the new processor (would it still be considered x68)?
Please try not to flame the question....I am a bit of a newb at this, and really don't know.
If SGI is still relying on Intel processors in 2005 I will cry my little eyes out. LONG LIVE MIPS!
I'm a loner Dottie, a Rebel.
Its Intel's old marketing ploy back *again*
Pentium_Number = Pentium_Number + 1
Give it a slightly larger instruction set, whack a bigger heatsink on it and overclock, stir, shake & Doo-doo-doo-doo - Its the processor every headless chicken buys
Ripping an new rectum in the fabric of spacetime.
Whew, Pentium III/IV is still not fast enough to encode Mpeg2 without Add-on Mpeg Encoder card. :( And it's suck that Athlon doesn't have SIMD either :(
Am I missing something or is everyone else missing something? I'm reasonably certain that Windows 2000 is a 64-bit OS. I've already seen source code and compiler directives, etc, that accommodate 64-bit data types, and they are in use in the new MS [sample] source code I'm seeing.
Furthermore, haven't 64-bit processors been out since the Pentium Pro?
Intel's crying like a spoiled little fat rich kid who just got beat up by the poor kid down the street. The athlon positively smokes the PIII (I've seen it for myself), and it's cheaper. They've got the 200mhz bus thing down, they've got (from what I've heard) 64 bit processing almost down, and they'll have 1ghz processors in the market while intel is busy recalling all of the P3s they rushed to get out.
There is also no replacement for overall balance and efficiency of design. There are plenty of well made four bangers that kick badly designed eight banger butt.
The addressing range will be useful for some database servers... but what else? You people are worse than the console twits that evaluate everything based on "bits"...
Damn straight! Vaporware from someone as 31337 as Linus kicks the ass of *any* real product!
uhh... how about if we focus on this because it's on topic and not on DNR because that's not? :)