Dan, <Early speculation was 4 symmetric FPU pipes compared to Athlon's 3, now it looks like two FPU pipes, and they aren't symmetrical.>
Athlon's three FPU execution units aren't symmetrical, either. Athlon has an FMUL unit, an FADD unit, and an miscellaneous (I forgot the real name) unit.
<The "double pumping" may mean that those 2 pipes can be considered double twin pipes under ideal circumstances, but it's looking more and more like Willamette will be pretty much comparable to Thunderbird.>
We still don't know if double-pumping allows for read-after-write hazards (an instruction using the results of the previous one). If so, I'd say that Willamette's integer unit is more efficient than Thunderbird. If not, well, there's always raw clock speed.
<Plus, it looks like the Willamette L2 was used for Coppermine, as I had speculated - so, with coppermine, we've already seen about 1/4 of the difference between Willamette and PIII.>
Dan, how do you know that Willamette's L2 cache was ripped from Coppermine? Does it even matter?
Tenchusatsu |
