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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cssmicro - Friday, July 22, 2005 - link
50 - I don't think you realize how cost-inneffective it is to create a completely new process flow or sort flow just to turn off a feature. Creating a different chip costs many hundreds of thousands of dollars PER LAYER that's changed. The mask changes alone would cost about half of a million dollars per reticle. Forget about the engineering initiative necessary to design the changes. It would be retarded of Intel to make a move like that. 45 hit the nail right on the head. The same products will be made, and then filtered out by working/non-working parts at end of line sorting.You don't really think your graphics / non-graphics chipsets are MADE differently, do you? (PSST, they're not). Simply put, they're all tested at the end of production. Some have working graphics sub-systems, some don't. They're distributed accordingly.
cornflake - Monday, June 20, 2005 - link
I'm not sure how much Intel paid AnandTech for this article, but it must be a grundle to shovel it like this..."As a dual core solution, Yonah is the most advanced (other than perhaps Itanium 2 Monticeto) solution that we have seen out of either AMD or Intel."
Wow, so they have some cool new integrated memory controller in place to leap frog AMD. NO, well then what about the new Intel branded Hyper-transport knock off they are working on? Oh well, at least we can look forward to some big Intel adds on AnandTech in the coming months!
Perhaps when AnandTech talks about how advanced a platform is, they should wait until they can compare the performance with others as they did recently in their article...
http://www.anandtech.com/IT/showdoc.aspx?i=2447
AMD is a full generation ahead in technology and a generation behind in fluff.
Icehawk - Friday, June 17, 2005 - link
What matters is how fast Corporates embrace 64-bit outside the Enterprise app level (since most are still mainframe or at least Unix based). Generally technology and software updates are slow to rollout due to costs, contracts, stability, etc. If, somehow, 64-bit was to become part of the mainstream corporate app profile - THEN it will matter if Intel has a 64-bit mobile (laptop) processor.I would add at least one year past when Longhorn finally debuts before you see a major shift towards 64-bit. Until then it won't be a big deal IMO.
apriest - Wednesday, June 15, 2005 - link
Dual Dempsey's sounds intriguing... and dang expensive I'll wager...JarredWalton - Wednesday, June 15, 2005 - link
52:Add 1 for EM64T support on 5xx and 3xx CPUs.
Add 2 for VT support on 6xx CPUs.
Add 3 for 65nm 6xx CPUs that overlap 90nm parts (and have VT).
Otherwise, it's basically higher numbers within the same family gives better performance/features. It's a way to de-emphasize MHz/GHz, since we may be plateauing on clock speeds for a while. Intel spent so long convincing people to upgrade PCs for an extra 400 MHz that they now need to change tactics. Smart marketing, really.
cryptonomicon - Wednesday, June 15, 2005 - link
for the love of god, can someone explain INTELs not so new naming scheme? I cant make 1 bit of sense from it, it just leaves me mystified.I mean come on!! at least with AMD we knew the 3000+ meant somewhat-roughly-equivalent to a pentium of 3000mhz. gah!
PrinceGaz - Wednesday, June 15, 2005 - link
Another point with Yonah is that it is intended to be a low-power consuming Mobile design, not desktop. Most laptop users have no need of a faster CPU but do want longer battery life / smaller lighter battery etc.Given that the whole design of the Pentium M chips (Banias -> Dothan -> Yonah) is about saving power by artificially limiting the maximum intended clock speed, it makes sense for Intel to make Yonah no faster than Dothan so that they can further reduce the power consumption of the processor at any given speed compared to what it would draw if the design could reach, say 2.5GHz.
It doesn't seem at all surprising to me that Yonah will be little or no higher clocked than Dothan as there is little demand for the extra speed but plenty of demand for reduced power consumption.
JarredWalton - Wednesday, June 15, 2005 - link
45 - Possibly, but as we indicated in the article, it's just a guess. As I understand it, Vanderpool (VT) isn't adding a lot to the die size - actually, it's been present since the Prescott 2M/Irwindale cores, but deactivated. I'm more inclined to believe that Intel is just trying to separate the market: charge more for VT enabled chips, as they will go to server/workstation systems which tend to cost more.-----------
Regarding clock speed, while it's true that clockspeed isn't everything, we're essentially looking at a process shrink that isn't improving the top speed of CPUs at all. Yonah is pretty much Dothan (maybe) with dual cores. Banias topped out at 1.7 GHz, Dothan topped out at 2.26 (or will in a while), and Yonah is launching at 2.13 GHz max. It's surprising, that's all.
While MHz/GHz are not everything, the basic fact remains that similar architectures running at the same clock speed will perform similarly. Dothan 2.13 GHz will match a single core Yonah 2.13 GHz barring any drastic changes to the underlying architecture. Merom is the next major change in the underlying architecture, so we'll have a CPU that may be as much as 50% faster at the same clock speed.
Taking a more pragmatic look at the CPU environment, it's sort of interesting that the fastest (official) Northwood cores were 3.4 GHz and Prescott with 90nm and a longer pipeline only bumped that up 400 MHz. Willamette topped out at 2.4 GHz, so the 180nm to 130nm transition increased top CPU spped by 1000 MHz - 42% instead of only 12%!
Think AMD's done much better? The fastest 130nm chips from AMD were the FX-55 (2.6 GHz) and right now it doesn't look like they'll release anything above 2.8 GHz with 90nm SOI! Even if we throw out the FX-55 (which is a bit of a special case, since it's the only 130nm AMD chip with strained silicon), AMD still only went up 400 MHz with the transition - 17%.
The best we saw out of AMD/Intel for the transition to 90nm was a 33% speed bump from Banias to Dothan, but it sounds like that was also accompanies by a slightly longer pipeline.
If we got as much as a 50% speed increase going from 180nm to 130nm, and only a 33% going from 130nm to 90nm (even with adding copper, SOI, and strained silicon), what will 65nm bring? A maximum of a 20% speed increase for the same design? Maybe even less? Time will tell, but I find it an interesting trend to say the least!
piroroadkill - Wednesday, June 15, 2005 - link
Yonah was the only thing worth looking at. This is certainly no 'offensive' by Intel.Pandaren - Wednesday, June 15, 2005 - link
People keep shouting about 64-bits, but 64-bits won't make a difference to the vast majority of users. Most of the people I know who use computers surf the web, write email, print pictures, and other very basic tasks. In the corporate space, the transition to 64-bit will be glacial. The place I'm working at has used Windows 2000 for almost four years now and has no plans to change. They aren't the only ones:http://news.com.com/The+slow+road+to+Windows+XP/21...
The only ones 64-bit will make a difference to are the very small percentage of people who actually need it, and the fanbois who buy the biggest for the sake of having the biggest.