Intel On the Offensive: Roadmap Details and Analysis
by Kristopher Kubicki & Jarred Walton on June 14, 2005 4:33 PM EST- Posted in
- CPUs
Also mentioned in the roadmap were speed and feature revisions on the Celeron lineup. Aside from the extra speed boost, the new Celeron chips will also receive EM64T support.
The Celeron D 351/350 will launch this month at $127 with price cuts on all Celeron and Pentium chips almost exactly a month after. Unfortunately, our crystal ball doesn't go past Celeron 3.33GHz. We would expect to see a Cedar Mill revision of Celeron, perhaps with 512KB L2 cache. The roadmaps very specifically do not show any new value processors based on 65nm at least through Q2'06. The roadmap does hint at speed bumps in Q2'06, but the exact reason why there are no 65nm value processors seems quite vague.
Just before Broadwater, we will see the launch of 945GZ. G45GZ seems almost like a step back, with identical features to 915G including 800FSB and DDR2-533. However, the chipset will get an update on the integrated graphics to GMA950 and an updated Southbridge to ICH7. Oddly enough, Intel also claims that this will be a mainstream chipset, even though the FSB and DDR clocks are lower than existing 945P products. If anything, this might be just another indicator that Intel's push for 1066FSB wasn't really the solution that they had intended.
Intel has also decided to rework their motherboard SKUs and this should be evident already on the retail market. Each new Intel branded motherboard based on 945 or higher will receive one of several tags listed below:
Intel Single Core Value Desktop Lineup LGA775 |
||||
Processor |
Speed |
L2 Cache |
FSB |
Launch |
Celeron D 355 |
3.33GHz |
256KB |
533MHz |
Q4'05 |
Celeron D 351 |
3.20GHz |
256KB |
533MHz |
Soon |
Celeron D 346 |
3.06GHz |
256KB |
533MHz |
Soon |
Celeron D 341 |
2.93GHz |
256KB |
533MHz |
Soon |
Celeron D 336 |
2.80GHz |
256KB |
533MHz |
Soon |
Celeron D 331 |
2.66GHz |
256KB |
533MHz |
Soon |
Celeron D 326 |
2.53GHz |
256KB |
533MHz |
Soon |
The Celeron D 351/350 will launch this month at $127 with price cuts on all Celeron and Pentium chips almost exactly a month after. Unfortunately, our crystal ball doesn't go past Celeron 3.33GHz. We would expect to see a Cedar Mill revision of Celeron, perhaps with 512KB L2 cache. The roadmaps very specifically do not show any new value processors based on 65nm at least through Q2'06. The roadmap does hint at speed bumps in Q2'06, but the exact reason why there are no 65nm value processors seems quite vague.
Desktop Chipsets
The roadmap also starts to talk about Intel's Broadwater chipset. Broadwater sounds exciting because it replaces all chipsets for Intel - from 955X all the way down. Our guess is that Broadwater will act more like nForce; different revisions will fill differing demands. Where Intel always used to speak of two differing chipsets (like Canterwood/Springdale, Alderwood/Grantsdale, Glenwood/Lakeport), even if they were nearly identical, the fact that Intel talks about a single chipset family unifying all of their desktop platforms indicates that things won't be exactly business as usual come Q2'06 during the next chipset launch. Aside from the general updates (ICH8 and next generation iAMT), the roadmaps revealed almost nothing about Broadwater.Just before Broadwater, we will see the launch of 945GZ. G45GZ seems almost like a step back, with identical features to 915G including 800FSB and DDR2-533. However, the chipset will get an update on the integrated graphics to GMA950 and an updated Southbridge to ICH7. Oddly enough, Intel also claims that this will be a mainstream chipset, even though the FSB and DDR clocks are lower than existing 945P products. If anything, this might be just another indicator that Intel's push for 1066FSB wasn't really the solution that they had intended.
Intel has also decided to rework their motherboard SKUs and this should be evident already on the retail market. Each new Intel branded motherboard based on 945 or higher will receive one of several tags listed below:
- X - Extreme Series
- M - Media Series
- E - Executive Series
- C - Classic Series
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Reflex - Tuesday, June 14, 2005 - link
VT/Pacifica is a niche technology, that much is for certain. It will definatly help the server segment(imagine 4 'machine' clusters that are all running on the same hardware) and some enthusiasts may like it(although I bet most won't use it often to maximize performance), but its not going to take the world by storm or anything.As for Yonah and power savings, remember that the entire platform must be compared to comparable AMD solutions, not just the CPU. AMD builds most northbridge functions(memory controller being the obvious one) into thier CPU which saves a considerable amount of power, and allows single chip chipset solutions like nForce to be practical. Measuring power consumption of just the CPU's without the supporting platform is apples to oranges.
StriderGT - Tuesday, June 14, 2005 - link
And in order to be 100% precise :-) Dual OS natively is brought to x86 for the first time through these two technologies. The current solutions require emulation/software layer and thus exhibit higher overheads.The problem though lies in the fact that even dual cores under the same OS can not cope with heavy multitasking (eg two heavy applications) without a significant perf. penalty for both. So as correctly pointed in this site, its another thing to increase heavy multitasking performance and another to actually use those scenarios since the hit will be noticeable. The same logic applies even more exaggerated in the case of two OSes and their apps running concurrently... (and by that I do not mean Solitaire XP together with Opera for Linux; this is something even Vanderpool can do :-)
StriderGT - Tuesday, June 14, 2005 - link
#14 I totally agree with you, but that does not change the fact that VT/Pacifica is a niche feature at best (admins, testers etc)KristopherKubicki - Tuesday, June 14, 2005 - link
StriderGT: Well dual OSes can be done right now with overhead; thats what VMware, UML and such are for. Part of the goal is to minimize overhead. VT nor Pacifica are limited to dual core CPUs by the way.Kristopher
StriderGT - Tuesday, June 14, 2005 - link
I do not think that anyone besides administrators would need VT, let alone use such a thing. DualBoot seems bulky but its way faster and more robust. A real usage scenario would require you to boot in XP to play games reboot in Linux to surf or whatever, otherwise two OSes running together will impose a real overhead. So you only gain the few mins or secs between each boot and lose performacewise. Its more like look what dual cores can do feature than what most peole will do...cscpianoman - Tuesday, June 14, 2005 - link
Interesting, but I would like to have a chart of AMD to the side. Is this coming tomorrow?Of all the chips Yonah looks the most promising and yet as I was glancing through it would be confined to certain applications. The energy requirements are stellar! I would love to see how AMD is going to compete.
KristopherKubicki - Tuesday, June 14, 2005 - link
StriderGT: Actually I think VT is pretty neat. I run Linux on one machine and Windows for work. Putting both on the same computer would be really awesome.Kristopher
StriderGT - Tuesday, June 14, 2005 - link
hope so 2 #9 :-) because otherwise we will stick to "virtualized" performance gains... Can u say Vanderpooled?!? A real show stopper for desktop users!BTW I forgot to give a thumbs up to intel engineers for their latest innovation. The dual core superglue.
PS I think that marketing dep of intel devoured their last real engineers long ago. So now they meet apple and we get platformization en extremis... I love this buzzzzzzzzzzwordzzzzzzzz
flatblastard - Tuesday, June 14, 2005 - link
Sure hope AMD has their floatation devices handy.KristopherKubicki - Tuesday, June 14, 2005 - link
Kensei: Ooops - fixed.Kristopher