Techieguy,
Interesting article.
Talks about tualatin and speeds etc:
Tualatin! New Pentium IIIs on the way
By John G. Spooner, ZDNet News
But with AMD launching an all-out, full-court press, will the unleashing of these new Intel processors be too little, too late?
Just when you thought the Pentium III was on its last legs, Intel Corp. (Nasdaq:INTC - news) has plans to extend the chip well into 2001.
New details published on the Web by InQuest Research suggest that Intel will launch a new version of the Pentium III chip, code-named "Tualatin," as soon as the middle of next year.
Analysts say the new chip can't come too soon for Intel in its knock-down, never-ending battle with archrival Advanced Micro Devices Inc. (NYSE:AMD - news) for processor dominance. Intel officials declined to comment on the report.
However, ZDNet News sources confirm the code name for a new family of Pentium III chips based on Intel's 0.13-micron manufacturing process. The new manufacturing process would allow Intel to increase the performance of the Pentium III.
Cutting power use, costs
The benefit of moving to the new process will be a decrease in power consumption and manufacturing costs.
At the same time, a greater number of chips could be produced from a single silicon wafer, which would help alleviate some of Intel's high-end chip manufacturing woes, said InQuest analyst Bert McComas.
Intel is expected to begin the transition to 0.13-micron process from its current 0.18-micron process in the middle of next year.
The first Tualatin chips will be manufactured using aluminum interconnects. (Interconnects are tiny pieces of wire that connect transistors.) Current Intel Pentium IIIs, known by the code-name Coppermine, also use aluminum interconnects. However, in a twist of nomenclature, Tualatin chips will be manufactured at a later date with copper interconnects, sources said. The switch to copper can increase performance.
Filling performance gaps
The new Tualatin chips would allow Intel to fill the performance gap between its current Pentium III chip, topping out at 1.1GHz, and its high-end Pentium 4 chip, due this fall.
At the same time, InQuest's McComas says Tualatin will help fend off an increasingly aggressive AMD.
Until the Tualatin chips begin shipping around the middle of next year, Intel faces a hole in its processor lineup that's "large enough (for AMD) to drive a truck through," he said.
That's because, although Intel's Pentium 4 is expected to ship in October at 1.4GHz, PCs that use the new chip are expected to be very expensive.
The additional expense will come from the chip itself, Rambus direct RAM (which commands a heavy premium over synchronous dynamic RAM) and more expensive motherboards, McComas said.
Advantage, AMD?
The Pentium 4's design, which features a long, 20-stage pipeline, may also deliver "less than exciting performance," compared with AMD Athlons at similar speeds.
A pipeline is an internal structure that lines up instructions to be processed. Chips with longer pipelines sometimes do not perform as well as those with shorter pipelines, he said.
If things happen as McComas predicts, it will put AMD in the driver's seat when it comes to desktop price/performance.
And AMD will continue to run up the score. The company, which is expected to ship a 1.1GHz Athlon this month, will continue to increase the clock speed of its Athlon, hitting 1.5GHz by early next year, according to publicly stated plans. AMD's enhanced Mustang processor core will also come into play during this time.
The Pentium 4, meanwhile, will be available at 1.3GHz, 1.4GHz and 1.5GHz clock speeds by January.
Tualatin to go mobile
Tualatin can also support a 200MHz system bus, McComas said, matching today's Athlon -- although Athlon will jump to 266MHz to support PC266 double data rate SDRAM later this year.
Sources say that Intel will offer a performance enhancement by upping the size of the Pentium III's Level 2 cache from 256KB to 512KB. Tualatin chips will likely arrive at about 1.2GHz, and McComas believes it will top out at around 1.3GHz.
The first Tualatin chip, however, may come on the mobile side, sources said. Intel typically introduces chips built on new manufacturing processes into its mobile processor line first. The first 0.18-micron chip, for example, was a version of Intel's 400MHz mobile Pentium III chip.
2GHz by next year
The first 0.13-micron chip will likely be a 900MHz or 1GHz (1,000MHz) mobile Pentium III chip.
With Tualatin and Northwood, the follow-on to Intel's first Pentium 4 chip, the chip maker is expected to pull even and then exceed AMD's Athlon performance, McComas said.
The Northwood Pentium 4 chips, a version of the chip on Intel's 0.13-micron process, will be introduced at speeds of 2GHz and higher by the end of next year.
Northwood will likely compete with AMD's 'SledgeHammer' on the desktop. |
