Once again, Intel has decided to
turn up the heat on their arch rival, AMD. In a sort
of digital ying-yang, the battle for Performance Desktop and
Workstation Processor leadership, presses on relentlessly.
Like opposite yet mutual compliments, Intel releases the
3GHz P4 with 800MHz system bus and AMD lets fly with the
Athlon XP 3200+. It's almost like nature intended
it to be, isn't it? As Intel and AMD duke it out, in
an effort to out class the competition, the end user
community enjoys yet another incremental performance
enhancement. Not to mention a nice cost reduction
usually comes along, with what was formerly high end product
now mainstream, due to these brisk product maturity cycles.
Our last look at AMD's latest
product left us questioning AMD's performance rating
somewhat. Although AMD's new Athlon XP 3200+ branding
logically claims to have significantly better performance
than the 3.0GHz P4, our testing showed that it was about on
par with Intel's latest 3GHz chip, winning some and losing
some, in various rounds of testing of our benchmark suites.
This is the risk AMD runs, branding a product relative to
performance, rather than an easily understood clock speed
figure. Intel's approach however, on this new product
release of the 3.2GHz P4 is pretty straight forward.
It doesn't take a degree in Quantum Physics to understand
that this new Pentium 4 is a full 1GHz faster that AMD's
fastest Barton core at 2.2GHz for the Athlon XP 3200+.
However, the performance
picture behind the clock speed, is the story that many of
you come here to find out and that's what we'll aim to
deliver for you today. At 3.2GHz, the new Pentium 4 is
running a full 45% faster clock speed than an Athlon XP
3200+ at 2.2GHz. This is perhaps an impressive
data-point and a tribute to Intel's ability to scale the P4
core to amazing new heights. On the other hand, as AMD
likes to point out, it's not always about the MHz but how
efficient a processor is within each clock cycle. We'll roll
up our sleeves for you here and give you the straight scoop
on that data-point as well.
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Specifications of the Pentium 4
3.2GHz Processor |
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Another notch closer
to the 4GHz mark |
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- Clock Speed 3.2GHz
- 800MHz "Quad Pumped" Front Side Bus
- Hyperthreading Technology for increased
performance in Multi-tasking and Multi-threaded
applications
- .13 micron manufacturing process
- 512K on chip, Full Speed L2 Cache
- Rapid Execution Engine - ALU clocked at 2X
frequency of core
- 128bit Floating Point/Multimedia unit
- "Hyper Pipelined" Technology for extremely
high clock speeds
- Intel "NetBurst" micro-architecture
- Supported by the Intel® i875P and i865G
chipsets, with Hyperthreading support
- Internet Streaming SIMD Extensions 2
- Intel® MMX? media enhancement technology
- Memory cacheability up to 4 GB of addressable
memory space and system memory scalability up to
64 GB of physical memory
- Support for uni-processor designs
- 1.55V operating voltage range
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Pentium 4 .13 Micron Die
With 512K of full speed on chip L2 cache, an
800MHz Quad Pumped Front Side Bus, Hyperthreading, and 1.55V
operating voltage, not much has changed for the new 3.2GHz
Pentium 4, with the minor exception of an additional 200MHz
in clock speed. In the die image on the right, you'll
notice a couple of large rectangular dark grid regions on
the right hand side of the die. These are the two
banks of L2 cache memory. There is also a small block
up in the top left quadrant of the shot. This is a
block of what Intel calls "Execution Trace Cache", otherwise
known as L1 cache.
As you'll note, the memory structures here
take up a sizable portion of the die area. SRAM cache
memory is big real-estate hog and you can understand why
both Intel and AMD have to drive tighter process geometries,
in order to support larger amounts of cache moving forward.
Intel's Prescott Pentium 4 core, built on a 90 nanometer
manufacturing process, is going to have a full 1Mb of L2
cache on board. Intel will also be one of the first to
run 90 nanometer technology in high volume, when Prescott
hits later this year.
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A New Chip And
New Stock Intel Heat Sink |
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Intel's Product
Launch Kit |
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