Intel to Dump Pentium 4 in Favor of Pentium M

Opinion writes "According to The Register, Intel is to dump its Pentium 4 plans in favour of the new Pentium M architecture. The scrapped Tejas and Jayhawk processors represented Intel's next-gen 90nm P4 CPUs, due to arrive in 2005."

Where are they going to dump them?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'll pick up as many as i can carry..

Re:Where are they going to dump them?

[Rick.C]

I'll pick up as many as i can carry..

Wear an oven mitt... they tend to run HOT!

End of an era?

[swordboy]

So... What's the deal with Moore's law? It appears that heat density vs. pricing trends are now causing microprocessors to compete with charcoal (very hot, very cheap).

Is this the end? Or is Intel just trying to squeeze every last drop of cost out of a deal with IBM on their silicon-on-insulator patents?

Re:End of an era?

[croddy]

or are they just feeling the heat from AMD?

...or is that heat coming from their current products? ;-)

Re:End of an era?

[Paladin128]

It's an unexpected turn that makes a LOT of sense. If you read the article, the real catalyst for this change is the decision to go with 2 or more cores on one die that share the same L2 cache. The P4 is a poor architecture to do this with. Yes, nothing can really beat it at simple integer math, but it's got lots of problems:

1) The core is fscking big!
2) high frequency == draws lots of juice == runs way too hot
3) 20 stage pipeline (or like 30 in case of Prescott) makes penalties way too high on a branch mis-prediction, and requires more cache to minimize the impact.

The Pentium M architecture has a relatively high IPC, and lack of int throughput that is lost from lower overall clockspeed can be overcome by paralellism that multicore will bring. It also is rather efficient as far as power goes, and a much smaller core overall.

Re:End of an era?

[anderm7]

Yeah, I agree. I this is a great move. I'm an EE in Microelctronics, and I had been very dissapointed in Intel's tricks to get MHz up. For instance, those overly long pipelines. I'm glad they finally decided to come around and realized that both MHz and CPI(cycles per instruction) matter.

To first order, a chip is only limited by the setup & hold time of a latch, but that may not be a very good chip. It may run at 50 GHz, but its not going to do much more than heat up your case.

Re:End of an era?

[dasmegabyte]

I can't wait to see how they spin this is marketing.

"Say, guys? When we told you that clock speed was the only factor in speed, and that a long pipeline was the only way to go, we were joking! NO NO NO, wait, don't go buy AMD chips or G5s, because -- uh -- they're the suck. Look, a dancing guy in a shiny suit uses our chips!"

Re:End of an era?

[VertigoAce]

Either that or a very extensive marketing campaign for the Pentium M. The Pentium M is easily confused with chips like the Pentium 4 M. I have a laptop with a 1.6 GHz Pentium M (not full Centrino since it has an IBM a/b wireless card). An IBM project manager for the T-series Thinkpads compared it to a 2.0-2.4 GHz Pentium 4. Given that it also gets 4+ hours of battery life (year old battery with 80% original capacity) while using wireless network, the system is definitely better than a P4 based system. It's

Re:End of an era?

[timeOday]

I can't believe this, to me it seems like a big deal. The Pentium-M is a modded Pentium-3. If this is true, Intel is abandoning the whole direction they took with the P4 = MHz at all cost. Also IIRC the Pentium-M was designed in Israel, and was their first-ever chip delivered on time, so this isn't a great development for US computer engineering.

I don't think we can count on quiet, low-power desktops though. I bet Intel will just ramp up the Pentium-M until it's a hot as the P4 (but by then it will be faster than todays P4 due to higher IPC).

Re:End of an era?

[ball-lightning]

IPC = Instructions Per Cycle. Its the amount of work a CPU can do in a clock cycle. (The higher the IPC, the more efficent the processor, which is how AMD's processors can do the same amount of work with a lower clock speed)

Re:End of an era?

[CKW]

> When are the processor companies goign to invest in the diamond wafers?

Oh, if only the big huge ultra-competition-paranoid hyper advanced ultra-tech companies full of PhD Phycisics and Electrical Engineers would adopt this ground-breaking technology that I a lowly luser know about!!!!! The fools!!! They're missing the boat!! Holding back progress!! How could they possibly be so stupid!!!?!??!?? It's it all so obvious!!!!

Re:End of an era?

[dasmegabyte]

I'd like to know who the grandparent poster thinks is paying for all this diamond research.

If I recall, most of it is taking place in small research companies funded by capital from corporations like Intel, who then would have a percentage stake in the technology if and when it comes around.

There's also plenty of interneal research and doctoral work funded by grants from IBM, Intel, etc.0

Re:End of an era?

[Gilk180]

actually, no. Moore's law has been misquoted and misused in so many places it is a shame.

The cost is not factored in to moore's law. The law pertains to chips with the lowest per-component cost. It has nothing to do with the ratio of cost to transister count.

Good Idea

[derphilipp]

This seems like a really smart idea. Dont go an get the Ultra-Gigaherz-Processor but a descend, processor that consumes only a low amount of power -> Longer batterylife for laptops -> Silent PCs -> Longer lifetime of the processor (?)

Re:hrm

[twbecker]

It's the fan in my pc that's loud not the processor. even small fans make noise.

Uhh, yeah. And the reason you NEED that big fan is because of all the heat that CPU is generating. Smaller fans = less noise.

I still have a couple Pentium I with MMX running and without a hitch. How much longer are you talking about?

And what kind of temps do they run at? Much cooler than a 3.2Ghz Prescott, I can promise you.

Not to sound like an Apple zealot (I'm far from it), but it seems like you've bought into the "Mhz myth" hook, line and sinker. Lower power and lower speeds does not need to equal lower performance.

Re:hrm

[Shinobi]

Smaller fan sounding less than a big fan is all relative. To move the same amount of air in a given time, the small fan needs a far higher rpm, which increases noise.

Re:hrm

[mobiux]

"but it seems like you've bought into the "Mhz myth" hook, line and sinker"

I think that this is going to be a HUGE problem for intel. For years this has been the major marketing tool they've used. So now, they are just going to say, "Um, oh yeah, all that stuff we told you, about mhz, ghz, and stuff, that doesn't really apply to us anymore."

AMD and Apple really should take advantage of this and do a little "we were right all along" ad.

Re:hrm

[devaldez]

Gotta love revisionist history...AMD was the king of MHz marketing back in the day...oh yeah, don't worry that we're AMD cuz our K6 is clocked at the same speed, so we're just as fast...except that it didn't work that way for them, either.

Feel free to hate marketing (I'm in marketing and I hate it), but keep the right sense of perspective and history or you simply lose credibility. If you want to hate a company, simply hate them, don't seek ways to justify the hate.

Re:hrm

[jkabbe]

This should have been visible from a mile away. A month or so ago there was an article (on The Register I think) about Intel abandoning it's Mhz marketing in favor of a simple number system (for example, 5xx series for one processor line, 7xx series for another processor line). It was obvious to me at the time this was because they would be dumping the current P-4 and going with the P-M. Why else would you remove Mhz from the equation?

Re:hrm

[Doomdark]

AMD and Apple really should take advantage of this and do a little "we were right all along" ad.

Hardly. That'd only be relevant for part of geek population, or Apple loyalists, because:

• General populations attention span (half a Friends episode or so) prevents them from even remembering Intel's earlier claims
• People never heard anyone claiming Mhz thing was a myth (it was only used by non-Intel companies, minor players for many computer illiterates); for them "Intel inside" and "this goes to eleven" sales speeches were all the "facts" needed.
• Intel wouldn't have to explain lower clock frequencies, just wait few months for new designs to catch up. It's not like they stopped speeding up frequencies, just that M design _currently_ uses lower than what 4 series was currently designed to use

Any decent marketing department should be able to fairly easily sell change like this. If they anticipated significant trouble, this decision wasn't announced at this point, rest assured. It's not like design decisions for longer-running production lines didn't radically change fairly often. That's their job, to explain and spin it appropriately. And in this case there's enough positive spin to go around. Just imply these are the "wireless chips" (idiotic term, for sure, but only for people who spend few seconds to think about it), and extend from there.

Re:hrm

[Cyno01]

Not smaller fans, slower fans. A smaller fan runnign the same RPM as a large fan will move less aire with the same amount of noise, a large fan can move the same amount of air at much smaller RPMs than the small fan, and in doing so generate less noise. My case has 1 120mm fan and 1 92mm fan, it probably pushes the same amount of air as my friends setup which has 4 80mm case fans, but with substantially less noise.

Re:hrm

[Junks Jerzey]

I still have a couple Pentium I with MMX running and without a hitch. How much longer are you talking about?

That was back when Intel x86 chip ran fairly cool. The real question is "how long does a Prescott-level P4 chip last?"

Re:hrm

[w3weasel]

I still have a couple Pentium I with MMX running and without a hitch. How much longer are you talking about?

That's not a fair comparison... you can hardly even fry an egg on those old processors.
Today's processors let you fry that egg with ease, while simultaneously calculating whether the egg preceeded the chicken, render the resulting proto-fowl in stunning 3D, with time left over to disprove your own existance.

Re:hrm

[pohl]

It's the fan in my pc that's loud not the processor.

Ever wonder about the reason why the fan is sitting there right on top of the processor? Could there be some sort of relationship between the two? I'd wager that if the processor ran cooler, you might be able to dispense with the processor-fan altogether and just use a heat-sink which, being just a solid hunk of metal, makes no noise whatsoever. This could be the next giant leap in Quiet Computing! Imagine a beo...

Re:hrm

[Fex303]

Ever wonder about the reason why the fan is sitting there right on top of the processor?

It's like a hat for it, right? So it looks stylish. Otherwise the RAM will laugh at it...

It's good that they didn't call this pentium 5

[foidulus]

Because the name pentium came as the successor to the 80486,(ie 5, thus pentium) which was the successor to the 386, 286,186,8086. Thus the 5th generation of the 5th generation chip would have been kind of dumb. I think they should just abandon the pentium name all together, but by this point it has too much name recognition.

Re:It's good that they didn't call this pentium 5

[hyc]

Not just "name recognition", which implies a nebulous marketing benefit. "Pentium" is a registered trademark, and trademarks have to be used to stay valid. And there's no way they'd abandon any intellectual property, not even a name...

Re:It's good that they didn't call this pentium 5

[Ruie]

You have a good point.

Does this mean that marketing folks at Intel can only count using one hand ? :)

Re:It's good that they didn't call this pentium 5

[espo812]

Thus the 5th generation of the 5th generation chip would have been kind of dumb.

What's wrong with the fifth release of the fifth release? Sendmail version 5.5 [eeye.com], PGP 5.5 [wiretapped.net], Internet Explorer version 5.5 [microsoft.com], AOL Instant Messenger version 5.5 [aim.com].

Re:It's good that they didn't call this pentium 5

[rusty0101]

Well, when they come out with the Septium 7 chip, perhaps it will answer questions before they are asked.

Of course coming from Intel, one in 7 million responses will be wrong, there will be an instruction added to later dies that corrects for that and all binaries will have to be re-compiled to take advantage of that new instruction. The new instruction will cause two other errors to crop up in more common responses.

Pentium mm

[Mad Man]

due to arrive in 2005

Shouldn't that be Pentium MMV?

Re:Pentium mm

[killmenow]

Shouldn't that be Pentium MMV?

I get the roman numerals thing, but I couldn't help thinking of a different meaning for MMV. So...

Shouldn't that be Pentium YMMV?

Re:Pentium mm

[mrogers]

Your megahertz may vary?

Re:Pentium mm

[SpryGuy]

Could be worse... they could come out with the Pentium DMV

Instructions have to queue up forever before they're executed. Talk about long pipelines!

Power consumption is important

[cpghost]

The more laptops out there, the more important are power saving CPUs. Pentium-M's are a good step in the right direction after the P4 90nm debacle.

Even in the server market, cutting on power consumption is getting more and more important. If you have a park of 1000+ machines in a data center, power consumption matters.

Re:Power consumption is important

[getch();]

The issue of power consumption is rapidly becoming much more significant than even the parent poster realizes.

The general dynamic power (operating power) equation for CMOS circuits has switching frequency as a squared term. Voltage and junction capacitance (think die size here) are also present, but are not squared.

If Intel were to take the P-IV architecture as far as it had planned, an extra few bucks for electricity would be the least of its worries. Without some unforseen advancement, power per unit area would become a (relatively) intractable problem. Even though voltage and die size would probably decrease, the increase in frequency coupled with the reduced area would likely provide a serious problem for cooling. I've read papers that have estimated that air cooling won't be able to dissipate much more heat than it's already required to. Taken far enough, the head produced could just vaporize the silicon (obviously that's not occurring in the near future).

In short: good move, Intel.

Re:Power consumption is important

[ballpoint]

Not only for laptops or server rooms. My power consumption at home has increased by 25% in three years due to increasing computer use by kids & wife.

I'd like to install still more always-on equipment like webcams, video servers and such. But, with energy prices that will probably triple over the next 10 years, I'm not going to be able to afford these increases much longer.

Change of ideas

[SavedLinuXgeeK]

As stated in a previous article, I think, Intel has been running the PIV name for a long, long time,(in computer years), and now with AMD64 coming out, people will see the PIV as old, and the AMD as new, even if things are comparable. Consumers are extremely superficial (Speaking from sales experience). I think this may just help Intel get some more umph into their line, before 64-bit hits critical mass.

No Suprise

[paitre]

This really shouldn't be a suprise to -anyone- who's been paying attention to what's been going on.
Prescott is disturbingly hot, and the next-gen chips had no real hope of being much cooler. At most 10-15%, which wouldn't have gotten near their MHz goals.
P-M, on the other hand, is a damned good chip in its own right, has better IPC, and is a better CPU, all around, than the P4 line.

Now, what does this mean for those of us in the enterprise space? Are we -really- going to have to wait until 2006 for a new chip iteration from Intel? If that's the case (and I -really- doubt it), AMD would have a disturbingly large (and long) opening in which to pitch its wares...Intel would definately lose marker share in the server arena at that point.

So, multi-core P-M chips for the desktop next year-ish. So we're stuck with the hotplate known as Prescott until then. Guess I'll be sticking with AMD for a while yet :)

Re:No Suprise

[ionpro]

...consuming only 70% of the power of the AMD Athlon 64 mobile chip with about as much CPU power.

Eh? I don't think so. The Athlon 64 mobile chip (at least the 3000+) achieves near performance parity with the desktop chip. Near as I can tell, the IPC of the Athlon and Pentium-M archetectures is nearly the same per clock (and I own one of each). For instance, my 1.3Ghz Pentium-M performs equivilantly in benchmarks to my Athlon 1800+ desktop (which is handicapped by PC133 memory). But the clock speed of the Pentium Ms is far below the clock of the Athlon mobile, and it wasn't designed to ramp in clock speed at all. The Athlon, on the other hand, has shown itself to be quite the clock speed maven, going from a 550Mhz Duron Slot-A to the short-lived Throughbred-B Athlon 2800+ at 2.25Ghz (and the soon-to-be-released Athlon 64 3700+ at 2.4Ghz)

I agree, though; it will be interesting to see AMD as the overly-hot higher clockspeed contender in this new processor race. AMD has never done particularly well with mobile chips (as witnessed by Intel's 85% market share in the mobile sector); perhaps this will force their hand on that front somewhat.

Religious Nomenclature?

[Himring]

Dothan is in due course expected form the basis for 'Jonah', Intel's first two-core Pentium M, due to ship during H2 2005, possibly at 65nm. To date, Jonah has been scheduled to be succeeded by 'Merom' and 'Conroe', two chips based on the same architecture, during H1 2006. While Merom is to be pitched at notebooks, Conroe - crucially - is a desktop chip.

Dothan: Meaning: two wells. A famous pasture-ground where Joseph found his brethren watching their flocks. Here, at the suggestion of Judah, they sold him to the Ishmaelite merchants (Gen. 37:17). It is mentioned on monuments in B.C. 1600.

Jonah (We all know who Jonah was and/or you need to back to sunday school....)

Merom (WebBible Encyclopedia) - christianAnswers.Net. Merom. Meaning: height. a lake in Northern Palestine through which the Jordan flows

Looks like Intel got some religion....

Re:Religious Nomenclature?

[kmcmartin]

iirc, the Pentium M was designed at Intel's Israeli division, so this makes some sense compared to the old Washington/Oregon naming scheme.

Re:Religious Nomenclature?

[the quick brown fox]

And VIA's EPIA processors are all named after Old Testament prophets: Samuel, Ezra, Nehemiah...

Re:Religious Nomenclature?

[CodeMonkey4Hire]

Most of the products that come out of Chandler, AZ are named after Arizona geologic features. Their codenames are chosen so that there is no possible infringement. Since it is not possible to trademark geological features (or Biblical/historical features), they are safe bets. As the previous poster noted, there is some work going on at their [relatively] new site in Isreal.

Faster Pentium M?

[strictnein]

Have they been able to ramp up the speeds for this architecture? None of the articles that I've read even speculate on what speeds these would be introduced at. I know Intel was planning on releasing a 2.0GHz Pentium M in the near future, but what about for desktops?

Side note: "Whitefield" a new processor in the Xeon line based somewhat aroudn the Pentium M, was created in India [theregister.co.uk].

Re:Faster Pentium M?

[Groo Wanderer]

No, the ramp of Dothan has not been all that spectacular, it was set to around October of last year, and it is only coming out. There were several speed path issues that were resolved, and it is due out on the 10th.

That said, it is still not what was promised last year, power consumption is higher, no new FSB as promised, and other problems. When it hits what was promised, it will probably be a year late.

-Charlie

well...

[Hangin10]

We've been on 32bit chips for quite some time..
Is 32bits enough? Is that why 64bit chips don't
seem to be catching on? or does the fact that
AMD and Intel seem to have fairly different
workings to their interface (AMD's seems fairly
simple, I haven't looked at Intel's).

Slightly related,
It seems both Intel and AMD stopped shipping free
copies of their Architecture Manuals. :(

Why 64-bit x86 chips aren't catching on

[MarcQuadra]

Well I think the reason AMD64 chips aren't catching on as quickly as they could is that the AMD roadmap clearly shows how they're moving to a new socket soon. Why would you buy or invest R&D into a machine that is essentially dead-ended in terms of CPU availability?

I think that once the socket-939 chips come out and the platform 'congeals' into a long-term solution you'll see more of these things selling.

It also doesn't help that there's no version of Windows that takes advantage of 64-bitness yet, or

Re:well...

[dead sun]

Meh, there are plenty of hacks (at the cost of a single extra cycle of latency) that extend memory access out to 48 bits. The problem being you can only have 4 GB pages, but for many, many applications it doesn't matter. For Joe Consumer who maybe, possibly, has 1 GB of RAM right now it's not a big deal. Heck, I haven't seen more than that preloaded into a computer at a retail outlet yet.

Sure, the people that need 64 bit memory access will welcome cheap 64 bit CPUs, but it isn't like 64 bit CPUs have been d

AMD

[kpogoda]

Looks like the recent AMD press and popularity has forced Intel to rethink its business strategy. Here is my most recent ocrrespondence with Dell Sales Support. You should find it amusing: Problem Description: I am in the market for an AMD machine. I have been browsing your website but can't find an AMD processor-based machine. Do you sell any AMD machines? If not, I will shop elsewhere. Thank You. Dear Valued Customer, Thank you for choosing Dell Online Consumer Customer Care. I apologize for the inconvenience caused with regard to this issue. I have looked through your e-mail and show that currently Dell is not offering AMD machines. I have forwarded your message to management and I assure you they will look into this issue and will work on making improvements based on your feedback. Once again, I apologize and truly regret any frustration this matter may have caused. Thank you for your patience and understanding. They are both greatly appreciated. If you have any further questions or concerns, please visit the following website to contact us. www.DellCustomerCare.com Respectfully, Alexander ~DTC41593 7:00 AM to 3:30 PM CST Mon to Fri Dell's Online Consumer Customer Care

Re:AMD

[paitre]

Don't you just -love- canned responses?
Even though slightly modified to be a "direct" reply to your "problem", it's still a canned response.
'sides, Dell isn't going to offer AMD systems until they're forced to by -corporate- market pressures. It's happening, it's just slow (and they know they lost a decent sized purchase I just made because of it).

Re:AMD

[Spoing]

1. Do you sell any AMD machines? If not, I will shop elsewhere.

Is there a technical reason you want a specific brand of processor?

To me, the CPU brand is becoming much less important. The supporting chipset (features and quality), memory expansion, and system maker tend to sway me much more these days.

Re:AMD

[TheLink]

Yeah. Maybe there have been one or two searches for opteron servers on Dell's search page :). Anyone looking for an Opteron version of the Poweredge 1600SC?

But their hands are probably tied. Rumour [eweek.com] is that Dell has committed to buying USD5 billion of Intel stuff. I suppose that's how Dell gets real cheap Intel stuff? Now I'm wondering if Dell has a "get out" clause (they should if they are sane) somewhere, and if it does, what it is and whether it is close to applying... Watch Intel and Dell closely to see

Is this surprising ?

[data1]

It has been known for quite some time that the Pentium-M processors would outperform desktop chips even when clocked at a higher frequency.
Seems that Intel finally wised up and is exploiting the technology in the Pentium-M Chips to lower its development costs even though that isnt explicitly stated in the article.
Yes, I did RTFA.

Intel is so far behind anyway

[Rosco P. Coltrane]

1979 - 86 (186 existed too but was a failure)
1982 - 286
1986 - 386
1989 - 486
1993 thru 2004 - Pentium (meaning 5-something), with a sub-version number

So, like, where's the Hexium, Heptium, Octium?

Re:Intel is so far behind anyway

[CrazyTalk]

Don't forget, when the Pentium first came out it was refered to unoffically as the 586, and the PII was refered to in the press as the 686, so even if intel had to change their naming scheme (they couldn't copyright a number like 80586, so they had to pick a name for it) people still thought of those chips under the old terms for quite some time. Now, of course, with the product line so divergent into different sub-classifications, it really doesnt make sense to map to the old numbering scheme.

Re:Intel is so far behind anyway

[maw]

They definitely couldn't copyright a number like 80586. It's even possible that they couldn't trademark it.

You are groping for....

[Groo Wanderer]

"So, like, where's the Hexium, Heptium, Octium?"

I believe the term you are groping for is 'Opteron'.

-Charlie

(Apologies, I couldn't resist such low hanging fruit).

Re:Intel is so far behind anyway

[vondo]

The Pentium Pro (pre-Pentium II) is the 686. The Pentium 4 is different enough from the P3 that it's really a new processor too. They stick with Pentium because it's a very well established brand name.

The Athlon in a K7, Opteron and Athlon64 are K8, but AMD isn't calling it the Octathalon either.

Re:Intel is so far behind anyway

[Chanc_Gorkon]

80186 was not a failure. I just was not used in PC's. Once upon a time, there was no real difference in the embedded field between the desktop processor and the processor used in say a traffic light. The 80186 was used in lots of embedded solutions. Checkout Wikipedia [wikipedia.org]

Re:Intel is so far behind anyway

[jkovach]

The 80186 still isn't dead - you can still buy them. I have a 186 single board computer sitting in a box on my desk that I assembled and programmed last year for a microprocessors course. The chips are still sold by DigiKey and the other usual suspects. I have a copy of the 186 datasheet here that actually says "updated June 2002" on it. Old hardware never dies...

Re:Intel is so far behind anyway

[Detritus]

See here [obsoleteco...museum.org], it was one of the few PCs that used the 80186.

Re:Intel is so far behind anyway

[JDevers]

Actually, the Pentium M is NOT a new architecture it is a Pentium III all dressed up for war. More or less it is a P3 with the P4's branch prediction unit, an ever so slightly longer pipeline, and a few other niceties from more modern processor designs.

See: http://arstechnica.com/cpu/004/pentium-m/pentium-m -1.html for a somewhat technical discussion...

Re:Intel is so far behind anyway

[LocoBurger]

The Pentium M is based on the same P6 core as the Pentium Pro through the Pentium III.

The really interesting part about this story is that Intel is going from their seventh generation architecture (Pentium 4) back to their sixth generation architecture (Pentium Pro/II/III/M).

We all knew this Pentium 4 thing would go nowhere.. :) except for the millions and millions of dollars it got Intel. Now they're trying to gracefully back out. It seems like a sound technical decision. I say good for them.

Just an additional scheme for reducing heat

[elwinc]

After all, you can't go in increasing CPU wattage indefinitely. I can recall the days far past when 30 watts was considered power hungry for a CPU. Sure, you can win a little with more and more rococo CPU cooler designs, but at some point you have to look for still more ways to limit CPU power. The mobile chips do it by varying their clock rates and turning parts of themselves off part of the time. Just think of it as an additional scheme for reducing CPU heat output.

Re:Just an additional scheme for reducing heat

[Rosco P. Coltrane]

After all, you can't go in increasing CPU wattage indefinitely.

For the n-th time, "wattage" isn't a word (perhaps it is, but then only in the M-W). It's called "power".

I can recall the days far past when 30 watts was considered power hungry for a CPU.

I remember a day where it took between 1 and 3 days to complete a raytrace in Povray, where it takes 2 hours tops today. You want to go back to that?

Sure, you can win a little with more and more rococo CPU cooler designs, but at some point you have to l

Re:Just an additional scheme for reducing heat

[Dun Malg]

For the n-th time, "wattage" isn't a word (perhaps it is, but then only in the M-W). It's called "power".

What the heck are you talking about? Wattage is a word, and it means "power". I'm an electrician. We use the term "wattage" rather than "power" because the latter is too ambiguous. A watt is a unit of measurement, so asking "what's the wattage on that bulb" will get you an answer in watts. Asking "what's the power on that bulb" will get you either puzzled stares or an answer in watts. It is always pre

More info

[Groo Wanderer]

There is more on The Inq here:
http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=15749
http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=15760
http:// www.theinquirer.net/?article=15768

And more coming soon, this story is far from over.

-Charlie

Disclaimer: I write for The Inq, but I did not do these stories.

Model numbers vs frequency

[Mad Quacker]

Now it all makes sense why Intel wants to use model numbers, their newer (faster) cpu's will run at a lower clock rate. Looks like they let marketing run engineering when the produced the P4, and now it's come to resolution.

About the P-M architecture

[Anonymous Coward]

Ars has an in-depth article [arstechnica.com] on the Pentium-M architecture. A quote from the conclusion:

The PM takes one of the P4's strengths--its branch prediction capabilities--and improves on it, adding its advantages to the strengths of the P6 architecture. The PM also deepens the P6's pipeline a bit, allowing for better clockspeed scaling, but without making clockspeed the central factor driving performance. In short, the PM looks like what the P4 might have been, had Intel not been so obsessed with the MHz race--it's a kind of alternate past, but one that may provide a glimpse of Intel's future.

Dear Slashdot:

[Paulrothrock]

Is that pronounced Pentium "emm" or Pentium "One Thousand?"
Signed,
Confused Mac User

Multicore cores - OS/software

[CodeMonkey4Hire]

In the article, they mentioned 2- and 4-core chips coming out in 2005 and 2006. How long will it take the unix and windows operating systems to take full advantage of all the cores? Are they already there? Does software running on these systems need to be specially written and/or compiled in order to take advantage of the multiple cores or will they mostly serve to handle multitasking?

Re:Multicore cores - OS/software

[Sique]

There are four different approaches to handle several cores.

a) Tread them like different processors. This requires you to use either an SMP capable operating system (virtually all Unices, Windows NT Series Server edition) to fully leverage the advantages, or...
(Operating system level)

b) ...have your software being aware of multiple cores and use a multithreaded approach. So calculations can be split into different treads and those dispatched to different cores.
(Application level)

c) Have your compiler opt

Mircosoft and CPU licensing.

[achilstone]

If Intel is moving to low power multicores chips what will this mean in terms of os licenses that limit the number of cpus which can be used at any one time such as MS? Will the likes of MS relax the licensing terms so that this type of technology will take off or will they use it as an excuse to make more money and kill off demand for multicore cpus? I wonder if Intel has discussed this with MS?

Hook 'em

[mgs1000]

Well, there goes my plan for having a Tejas Longhorn computer...

Prescott chips...

[Anonymous Coward]

I always thought naming a processor chip after a deputy minister who is responsible for transport but prefers to drive high-performance cars (Jaguars) for short distances, was the equivalent of putting on metal armour, climbing to a mountain during a thunderstorm, and waving a sword in the air while making disparaging comments about the gods.

Return of the son of the revenge of the P6

[zsazsa]

Wow. This is amazing. The P6 (PPro, PII, PIII) architecture is coming back to the desktop. This does make pretty good sense. The P6 has high IPC, and by applying some Pentium 4 tricks (Quad-pumped FSB, longer pipeline), this can make for a killer CPU. For more information, check out this Ars Technica Article [arstechnica.com] on the Pentium-M's P6 heritage. The chip doesn't even lie about it - its CPUID reports a P6 family CPU [216.239.57.104].

Re:Return of the son of the revenge of the P6

[barawn]

Quad-pumped FSB, longer pipeline

A quad-pumped FSB might make sense, although I doubt that the PM is actually all that memory-hungry, as the old P6s weren't, and neither were the Athlons.

A longer pipeline is virtually the definition of the P4 - it has one of the (if not the) longest pipelines in desktop processors anywhere. A long pipeline is what causes low IPC.

I really doubt that they'll lengthen the PM's pipeline much. Look at the Athlon XP -> Athlon 64 evolution - the pipeline was only stretched by a couple of clock cycles.

This is a curious point for Intel, as processors can't continue to get faster in a simple way - the heat issues are just too large right now. The PM will probably start getting the standard tricks that others are playing - hyperthreading, like the P4s, integrated memory controller, maybe even an L3 cache. But definitely not a long pipeline - that was the P4's mistake.

Incredibly smart move!

[Junks Jerzey]

Desktops have been in trouble for a while. A new CPU comes out with an 8% higher clockspeed, and then it uses 15% more power. Obviously there was a limit to how long that could continue, especially as those diddly performance increases weren't providing tangible benefits (compare an 8% clockspeed increase with switching to a dual core processor, for example). And at the same time the desktop market has been being heavily outpaced by laptops and mobile devices.

Cheap laptops

[SpinyManiac]

This means the end of desktop CPUs in laptops.

Decent battery life in a cheap laptop? Nah, they'll cut down on the batteries instead.

Pentium M vs AMD xxxx+

[swillden]

Will this move make the AMD "marketing ratings" irrelevant? They were invented to help make it clear that AMD processors performed as well as their P4 competition, even though the P4s were clocked much higher. The Pentium M, however, is based on the P3 architecture, which has always had performance that is comparable to the AMD chips at a given clock rate.

Will this now force AMD to find a graceful way to drop the marketing ratings, lest they appear to be artificially inflating their processors' performance?

Increasing number of cores...

[Spoing]

Here's a guess about what Intel is up to. From the brief article -- and keeping in mind this is The Register -- it looks like Intel is going for two targets;

1. Smaller; faster with lower power.
2. Multiple logical and physical cores; multi-threaded apps/OS will do well.

These two basic tagets seem to be a good idea;

1. Processing speed is really damn good now for single tasks.
2. More tasks are becoming standard, so having the 'extras' run without delay on a seperate core makes the system seem more snappy.
3. Some tasks can be CPU intensive and benifit from the extra cores; a reason to upgrade for Intel customers.
4. Speed per-core will increase, though the raw speed in MHZ is costly (in power and because it costs more to make the fab plants) so the fewer fab changes the better or being able to spread the operating life out for more years would be good.
5. With the speed and core # increase, lower-end devices become practical; disable the cores not needed just like other parts were disabled in the past (FPU, cache, ...).
6. Power savings; some cores can be throttled down when hybernating without taking down the whole processor.
7. Multi-processing; if you need the extra umph, plugging another set of cores in might be an easy upgrade or for use in a cluster. (Though CPU speed is not typically the main issue even for many complex problems.)

Scaling dead? Have we hit a clock rate wall?

[mc6809e]

The new 90nm Pentium 4's really didn't get much of a clock rate boost, which was a surprise. Reducing feature sizes has usually given us a good bump in clock rate. Remember the original Pentium 4 when it came out? There was a big jump in clock rate. This lastest shrink hasn't provided much. Now we hear that Intel is going to the Pentium-M: a chip with a lower clock-rate. That doesn't mean the chip is a poor performer. In fact, it runs very well. Like the Athlon, it gets much more work done per cycle than the Pentium 4.

Still, process shrinks in the past have yielded easy speed increases, but not this time around. Intel's move seems to confirm that there might be trouble ahead.

It looks like the folks at IBM also have concerns:

"Somewhere between 130-nm and 90-nm the whole system fell apart. Things stopped working and nobody seemed to notice." [eetimes.com]

Intel is floundering

[Mr. Neutron]

It seems to me like Intel just doesn't know what it's doing these days. While AMD does new and innovative things, like the first consumer desktop 64-bit x86 archetecture chip, what's Intel doing? Die shrinks and more absurdly drawn-out pipelines, it seems. If I were in charge of the shop at Intel, I'd set the following priorities:

1. Make a 64-bit challenger to Athlon64. If it means butchering the Itanium die and adding a 32-bit co-processor, so be it.

2. Enable SMP on something faster than Tualatin.

3. Wake up to the fact that Intel can no longer dominate the CPU market on name recognition and MHz rating alone.

All I can say is, at least Intel is opening up the way for more competition. It won't be long before the market share is split 60-40.

Re:Intel is floundering

[aksansai]

1. Make a 64-bit challenger to Athlon64. If it means butchering the Itanium die and adding a 32-bit co-processor, so be it.

Intel has already announced that it will also be releasing a variant of the x86-64 technology that was developed by AMD. You can see their announcement here [intel.com]. While technology analysts see that there are indeed differences, it is approached fundamentally in the same manner that AMD used - making compiler development for the "extended" 64-bit Intel processors easier.

This does not mean Intel is simply give up on the Itanium. They have more than a decade worth of R&D dollars into the processor. I don't believe they will actively pursue integrated the two 64-bit processors under one flag, either, because it would be easier to keep one facility churning out Itaniums and all their other facilities to make modified P4/PM chips with 64-bit extensions.

2. Enable SMP on something faster than Tualatin.

This is a matter of market preference. The market prefers a single processor (right now). I remember seeing supporting statistics but I can't find those at the moment. It was better than 90%. R&D is currently focusing on making single processors more efficient (Intel's hyperthreading is a good example). All these improvements will eventually trickle down to the small SMP sector Intel supports.

Also, Intel wishes to keep its Xeon and Xeon MP line strong. To do so would be to limit the offerings of SMP capable chips and chipsets to focus the multiprocessor market for higher profitability.

3. Wake up to the fact that Intel can no longer dominate the CPU market on name recognition and MHz rating alone.

Intel is beginning to realize this, but this does not change the fact that there are many people that will still choose Intel over AMD just based on name alone. I run into these types on a regular basis.

Another version 4 failure

[yngv]

Chalk it up as yet another product whose fourth version was bloated and disappointing.

Think DOS 4, Netscape 4, IE 4... any others?

Interesting how Windows skipped version 4...

Re:Another version 4 failure

[TeknoHog]

Interesting how Windows skipped version 4...

Windows 95 and 98 are actually version 4.something, which you can see with the 'ver' command in a DOS shell. Bloated and disappointing, you said?

I am seeing a lot of posts...

[anethema]

that say this is a great idea. I'm personally not so sure. They havent got the core beyond 1.7 ghz. Why? This is a P6 core cpu! Thats right, pentium pro, pentium 2, pentium 3, etc. They added some features, new stepping and thats it.

This has also been mentioned, but what I'm saying is, I have NO idea how they will get any kind of clockspeed out of this thing. It's been tooth and nail to try to get it to run where it is even. They can drop the process size to get more speed out of it, but that only takes you so far. You will have to lenghten the pipeline eventually which carries with it all the problems of the P4.

I just honestly cant see them taking the P6 core any further. I'm suprised they can even do what they do with it.

I also doubt they will drop the Pentium 4 core while they still have a lead on the athlons performance wise. P4 is a core they spent a LOT of time and money developing. I doubt they will just drop it.

Also, in the article, they say that intel will be tearing up their roadmaps and they SPECULATE Pentium-M will be the replacement. Might be a modified Pentium 4, or maybe a Pentium4-PentiumM mix.

Just my 2c.

Re:I am seeing a lot of posts...

[aksansai]

This has also been mentioned, but what I'm saying is, I have NO idea how they will get any kind of clockspeed out of this thing. It's been tooth and nail to try to get it to run where it is even. They can drop the process size to get more speed out of it, but that only takes you so far. You will have to lenghten the pipeline eventually which carries with it all the problems of the P4.

I just honestly cant see them taking the P6 core any further. I'm suprised they can even do what they do with it.

I see a ple

Damn the M....full speed ahead

[Prince Vegeta SSJ4]

I have a P4 machine on every floor in my house Just when I was about to cancel my Natural Gas service, the go and try to Lower the heat output of chips.

Pentium M "Not Invented Here" Held It Back

[CritterNYC]

Actually, the reason it took THIS friggin long to come to this decision was the resistance on the part of Intel in the US to fully accept the design of this chip by Intel in Israel. Apparently, there was quite a bit of "not invented here" mindset on the part of the US Intel folks, even though it was still Intel that created the Pentium M... just in Israel.

I can't find any info regarding this online at the moment, but I did get this information from a reliable source. Anyone else read this?

Re:No more desktops

[hyc]

What makes you think that? Why wouldn't you want to put a Pentium-M into a desktop machine?

Re:Lemme guess...

[mcbridematt]

Current breed of Pentium M's are pin-for-pin compatible with Socket 478 Pentium 4's, but appear to use a different type of GTL+ signalling. I guess that Intel will release a Pentium M version for LGA 778 (the new socket).

Finally, Intel realises that some long pipeline design with zero decent hardware rotation (up to Prescott), requiring huge cache and big clockspeed isn't that good.

Re:Lemme guess...

[dasmegabyte]

I don't remember these hypothetical old days!

My first PC was a 386-40. Two years later replaced by a 486-66 (new motherboard needed). Two years later replaced by a 486-120 (new motherboard needed). Next up was a Celeron 166 (new motherboard again), then a K6-233 (new motherboard for EDO ram) and a K6-2 350 after that (new motherboard to support the higher multiplier). I went intel for a little while, dual celeron, and after that a p3. New motherboards for each. Finally, I settled down with a top of t

Re:Lemme guess...

[tomstdenis]

Socket/Super 7 boards.... I recall having an MI, MII and a K6-2 350 in the same board.

Of course that would require both Intel and AMD to sit down and design some Socket1000 board or something. But that gets trickier cuz many of the pin [in Socket478 for instance] are grounds and power. IIRC there are 166 pins dedicated to power management. So the layout of the actual processor would be dictated somewhat by the location of power.

But it would be nice to be able to take out an Intel core and slap in an AM

Never going to happen

[msgmonkey]

Power pins are the least of the problems, bus protocols is the main reason for incompatibility.

AMD have gone with hypertransport and integrated membory controller in the Opteron/Athlon 64.

AFAIK Pentium-M uses a "hub" architecture with a 400MHZ link with the hub also providing the DDR memory controller amongst other things.

The reason Socket7 boards worked with different chips is because they all used the orginal Pentium bus protocol. With Pentium Pro, Intel went with a new GTL bus which was n't licensed to AMD, so AMD went with the Alpha bus with the K7(as there was ex Alpha people working on K7).

Re:braniac vs. speed demon

[Yoda's Mum]

The long pipeline approach was sustainable for a while, but with their newer processes (like the 90nm process used for the Prescotts) the heat costs of having the longer pipelines have proven too high. Their long pipeline design worked quite well for the Pentium 4's - give them enough cache, and they perform spectacularly, but the even longer pipelines required to keep cranking the clock speeds up, as with Prescott, are starting to be quite detrimental to the design. The Prescott architecture may be able to run at much higher clock speeds than the previous Northwood P4's, but they do so at the cost of requiring an even larger cache, and a much improved branch predictor. Had the improved branch predictor and increased cache simply been implemented on an existing Northwood core, and if Intel manufactured the chip on their 90nm process, it's quite likely that they'd have an even better performing chip than what Prescotts are capable of at higher clock speeds. That's all conjecture though - Intel didn't go that way, they let their marketing people decide on what the Prescott was going to be, and are now paying for it.

Re:braniac vs. speed demon

[bhtooefr]

About 5GHz is the upper limit for processors running on EXPERIMENTAL technology available currently. The Pentium-M performs as well as the P4, but at MUCH lower clock speeds, which also means lower heat.

The long pipelines allow higher clock speeds (shorter paths for current to flow down) at the expense of Instructions Per Clock (for a very rough estimate of the efficiency of a CPU, multiply clock speed * IPC).

Re:where does that leave performance freaks like m

[Gannoc]

No AMD suggestions please. I've never found them to be as stable as Intel CPUs .

I have an Intel machine myself, but have had AMDs in the past. The reason people think that AMD chips are unstable is that many people buy AMD processors when they're trying to get a cheap computer, and also use cheap memory, cheap motherboards, etc.

Get an AMD with a good motherboard, and it is as stable as an Intel.

Re:where does that leave performance freaks like m

[IWorkForMorons]

(No AMD suggestions please. I've never found them to be as stable as Intel CPUs ).

Bud...then you're limiting your speed and power right there. AMD systems are quite stable from my experience. Usually, it's when people buy bad equipment to surround their chip that causes them to think the chip is bad. Such as my own recent stablitily problems. After replacing the CPU fan and heatsink, replacing the power supply, and very nearly sinking $300 into a water-cooling system because I thought the chip was over heating, I spent $25 on a memory heatsink. Haven't had a single problem with unstablity since. And believe me...this system holds it's own against the hot and heavy Intel systems that are rated at several hundred Megahertz faster...