Intel Pentium Extreme Edition 840 Preview

Today, we're bringing you a Dual-Core Pentium quick take, on short notice from the folks at Intel. With only a few hours of testing at our disposal, we're attempting to make time with some level of meaningful analysis for you and hit Intel's NDA embargo lift time this morning. Would we have liked to spend more quality lab time on such an important launch event as the first dual core Pentium class CPU to ever hit the mainstream? You bet your CMOS digital flip-flop we would, but when hardware is shipped to the wild without a solid game plan behind it, in our gig you react or get walked on. So we did and here's what we've come up with. Read on for our first glance report of Intel's new Dual-Core Extreme Edition P4 and we promise to come back to you shortly with more in-depth coverage from every angle.

Intel Pentium Extreme Edition 840 Processor Intel's First Dual Core for the desktop

3.2GHz Dual Core Processor 800MHz "Quad-Pumped" frontside bus 0.09-micron manufacturing process Hyper-Threading Technology 2MB on-chip, full-speed L2 cache - 1MB for each core Intel EM64T Extensions - 64-bit computing Execute Disable Bit - For enhanced security Streaming SIMD Extensions - SSE2, SSE3 Supported by the Intel i955X Express chipset 1.20 - 1.4V operating voltage range Die size: approximately 206mm2 230 million transistors LGA775 Packaging - Land Grid Array 130 watts TPD (Thermal Design Power)

HyperThreading With Dual Cores -

With the Pentium Extreme Edition 840 processor, Intel integrated not only dual Prescott CPU cores but also carried their HyperThreading technology forward into the chip as well.  As a result there are actually 4 "logical" processing elements available in this new Pentium, two actual physical cores that each have the ability two process two independent threads simultaneously.

Dual Pentium 4 cores at 3.2GHz both Hyperthreading capable

Two integer and two floating point threads in process

Above is a high level representation of floating point and integer thread processing as it passes through each independent core of the Pentium Extreme Edition 840 processor.  As you'll note each core is capable of processing the integer and floating point workloads simultaneously, effectively making it 2 times more efficient in multi-threaded applications, than current single core P4s with HT technology and 4 times more efficient than single core CPUs without HyperThreading.  As developers continue to capitalize on the advantages of mutli-threading their application code base, these new dual core Pentium CPUs should have a considerable advantage.