Here's some more definitive info on Willy schedule and tapeout.
aceshardware.com see 2nd article for Tues. Feb 1
"Pentium IV on the right track again (CPU)
Posted By johan
Tuesday, February 1, 2000 - 6:48:03 AM
The first silicon of the Pentium IV (Alias Willamette) didn't fare well (read more here). Reportings are coming however that the Pentium IV project is shaping up. Although Integer performance doesn't seem to be anything superb (see our Technical forum , seems to be more or less 5% better than the Coppermine), FPU performance has definitly improved compared to the PIII. But the best thing about the Pentium IV seems to be the scalability: the info you find on the tech board jives with some rumours we heard: the Pentium IV reaches 1.3 GHz in the labs. Mind you, a month ago, AMD had already "real" (=not only in the labs) 1.2 GHz Athlon (Dresden fab, Copper interconnects) samples.
Nevertheless, the Pentium IV will be a real speed demon just like the Alpha 21364 and the AMD Athlon. JC told me that it takes about 11 to 12 months from the first tape out to shipping. The Pentium has taped out late november and was pretty buggy. But that seems to have improved vastly: ( see this message )
I know they have tape-out and got silicon back the first week of January. The source I have work at Intel and is very honest and very sure about tape-out. He also heard from rumors that A-0 silicon booted Windows NT with no trouble and no FIB edits. If true the chip is very healthy to start.
With all this info (or just rumours?), I speculate that we should see the Pentium IV launch around November, December 2000. Hopefully, I can tell you more when I get back from Intel's Developers Forum. I am really curious about this chip."
Here's some questions:
1. What is A-O silicon?
2. If A-O silicon was "buggy" how did it boot Windows NT? Or is this the second iteration, less than a month after first silicon?
For those interested, there's probably some good discussion on Ace's bulletin board, I haven't looked there yet.
Petz |
