The Consequence of Waking Up a Sleeping Giant: Intel Roadmaps Inside
by Kristopher Kubicki on January 25, 2005 7:44 PM EST- Posted in
- CPUs
Dual Core on the Horizon
So we lied originally - we have even better news. Dual core Smithfield processors, which are really nothing more than two Prescotts slapped together with independent caches, are scheduled to launch a little earlier than we originally claimed in previous roadmap articles. In fact, part of the push to launch so early seems to be to coincide with the 945/955 launch as those chipsets are the only ones to support the multiple core processors. Recall AMD's dual core launch strategy is to enable existing hardware (nForce4, K8T890, 8xxx) to run multiple cores. So while you can't plug a Smithfield into your existing 925X motherboard, it may be for the better. DDR2 has plenty of bandwidth to offer, but as we have seen in server benchmarks, multiple Pentium 4's competing on the memory bus can be quite slow. Dual core Pentium 4's might be horribly inefficient without DDR2-667, however that is another theory we can put to the test on launch day. If you look carefully, you'll see the Smithfields launching only at 800FSB. We find it slightly unusual that the entire 945/955 platform supports a front side bus speed that two $1000 SKUs utilize.
| Intel Dual Core PerformanceDesktop Lineup LGA775 | ||||
| Processor | Speed | L2 Cache | FSB | Launch |
| Pentium 4 840 | 3.20GHz | 2x1MB | 800MHz | Q2'05 |
| Pentium 4 830 | 3.00GHz | 2x1MB | 800MHz | Q2'05 |
| Pentium 4 820 | 2.80GHz | 2x1MB | 800MHz | Q2'05 |
Also note that the dual core processors on the desktop do not support HyperThreading. The server implementation of Smithfield, "Dempsey," has HyperThreading enabled. For database applications, this makes sense - although we have known for a long time that single threaded applications take a performance hit when a HyperThreading processor exclusively runs that program. Interestingly enough the Smithfield lineup has some very competitive price points according to the launch data. The 820, 830 and 840 models will launch at $241, $316 and $530 respectively - compare that to the Pentium 4 lineup today [RTPE: Pentium 4 775]. At today's prices that's only an $80 premium on the second core.
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Ozenmacher - Thursday, February 3, 2005 - link
Naw, I have nothing wrong with writing a positive article for Intel or AMD. I mean, I understand both companies have great chips, so I don't care if a positive article is written. But yeah, I still don't understand where sleazes came from, lol.JarredWalton - Wednesday, February 2, 2005 - link
Learn to type very fast (80 WPM or more) and write a lot of articles. You get all sorts of interesting slips. I would correct the "sleazes" for Kris, but unfortunately I can't. (Not enough access.)As for Kris being an Intel "fanboy", give it a rest. So he writes a relatively positive article on the latest Intel roadmap, what's the big deal? Does a relatively postitive AMD roadmap article make me an AMD fanboy? (Obviously not, since I get accused of being an Intel supporter just as often when I provide my own take on the market.)
We're all just interested in performance - price/performance for many of us. Competition from Intel is great, because AMD needs it just as much as Intel does. Given that the last few Intel roadmaps had little information on Smithfield and it looked like it would slip to late 2005 or 2006 instead of launching earlier, how can this revised roadmap be anything but good news? We'll still give a critical look at the final performance when all the products launch, and hopefully XP-64 will even become a factor some time this decade.
Ozenmacher - Wednesday, February 2, 2005 - link
Very good point #61, how could you "accidentally" type sleazes instead of sleeves? lolRoosterKooster - Tuesday, February 1, 2005 - link
Kris, "sleazes" can't be a typo. Even it it was, how did it escape the proofing?Perhaps you've been in a daze, but Intel has hardly been napping - just a bit on the back side of the power curve. Put all the vaporware aside and let's see what spring has in the air. Just tell the folks here, you are 100% pro-Intel.
EglsFly - Tuesday, February 1, 2005 - link
Wow, that article had Intel fanboy written all over it. To sum up: "Intel Better, and it gets better, need to see if AMD has enough up their sleazes ...."Give me a break!
Regs - Tuesday, February 1, 2005 - link
Good article Zebo. I agree with it.Intel has to slowly adapt the Pentium-M into the market. If they came out with a desk top CPU based on the PM, what would they say? "Look at this amazing CPU with twice the power with less the clock cycle!" While AMD just sits back and goes, "Hey, we've been doing this for years" Wouldn't look good.
Regs - Tuesday, February 1, 2005 - link
The reason why I think Intel won't scrap their Netburst Northwood's is because they sold the market on High Clock Speeds while also selling the mobile market with less power hungry yet more clock efficient processors. If they came out with something like AMD's processor, what would that make them look like? It seems like Intel's marketing department is running the course for Intel in the future other than their engineering department.When 939's come out with strained silicon that could possibly push through the 3.0 GHz barrier with SEE3, Intel's NetBurst processors will be looking pretty desolate.
Intel needs a knight-in-shinning armor and a 4.GHz Prescott with 2MB L2 cache is not going to do it. They would need to bring out a entire new line of CPU's to match performance with all A64's instead of pushing out one new CPU every 6 months that costs over 500 dollars.
Quanticles - Monday, January 31, 2005 - link
I liked Anandtech's point that Microsoft was delaying Windows64 until Intel was ready.Peter - Monday, January 31, 2005 - link
#38, I wouldn't say things were "even" before the Pentium-M showed up. Before that, Intel's speed step always required a deep-sleep transition and had only max and min states, while AMD's were quicker and more versatile, even the original implementation on K6-2+ (where transition time was even fine tuneable to the voltage regulator's needs).What happened at AMD for the last two years? They kept the power down in general, something Intel quite miserably failed to do on the desktop.
Note that I'm completely with you in that the Pentium-M is a very fine part, and that AMD has some catching up to do in the mobile arena. On the desktop, it's the other way around, and it's exactly this catching up that we see documented in your article.
We're both wrong on who did it first anyway. Guess what, it was Cyrix. Their 5x86 could do live transitions from its native (2x or 3x) multiplier down to 1x and even 1/2x and back up. And it actually worked. In 1995. (Separate voltage regulators for the CPU core were nonexistant back then.)
regards,
Peter
johnsonx - Monday, January 31, 2005 - link
Anytime the socket-754 Sempron has been discussed, I've said it makes little sense for AMD to purposely cripple a 64-bit processor down to 32-bits, as it leaves them no competitive advantage over Intel.With Intel extending EM64T all the way down the Celeron D line, now we see that AMD will now be at a competitive DISADVANTAGE vs. Intel because of their foolish crippling of the 754 Sempron. Dumb, AMD, dumb...
And before anyone comments, no I don't think Semprons are just a way for AMD to sell bad A64 cores that won't do 64-bit, but run 32-bit fine... that just isn't going to be a common enough failure mode. Cores with some bad cache? Sure. Cores with a malfunctioning HT link? Maybe. Cores with one memory channel on the fritz? Perhaps. 64-bit extensions not working? Nope.