Here is some positive press on Intel's P4 performance by Linley Gwennap.
> > Intel rethinks performance
> > By Linley Gwennap
> > (12/05/00, 10:50 a.m. EST)
> > Performance data for the recently released Pentium 4 shows the chip's
> > unique characteristics, which will affect the way Intel markets the
> > processor.
> > In 1995, when Intel began designing Pentium 4 (aka Willamette), the first
> > MMX chip had not been released. The designers realized, however, that by
> > the time Willamette reached the market, MMX would spur demand for
> > multimedia applications and that those applications would become key
> > measures of PC performance.
> > Indeed, now that Pentium III has reached 1 GHz, it has become clear that
> > 1990s-style applications, such as word processors and spreadsheets, don't
> > really benefit from faster CPUs. Just as 2-D Winmark became an obsolete
> > metric once graphics chips could redraw the screen faster than the eye
> > could see, benchmarks based on the old-style applications become
> > meaningless for super-GHz CPUs.
> > For that reason, Willamette's designers did not emphasize benchmarks, such
> > as SysMark, that rely primarily on the older productivity applications. As
> > a result, a 1.4-GHz Pentium 4 delivers the same SysMark 2000 performance
> > as a 1-GHz Pentium III.
> > But those applications don't need more performance. The applications that
> > will tax PCs in the future are 3-D graphics, image manipulation,
> > audio/video compression and voice recognition.
> > Pentium 4 excels in these areas: On test after test, the new processor
> > outruns Pentium III by 20 percent to 40 percent. The results should also
> > put Pentium 4 ahead of Advanced Micro Devices' Athlon on most multimedia
> > apps.
> > Presciently, the Willamette team also focused on maximizing the clock
> > speed of their processor. Pentium 4's ultralong pipeline should reach 2
> > GHz in Intel's 0.18-micron process, nearly doubling the top speed of
> > Pentium III in the same process. Athlon will be hard-pressed to reach 1.5
> > GHz in a comparable process.
> > Thus, Intel will emphasize Pentium 4's clock-speed advantage over Athlon
> > and, for more sophisticated users, its advantage on multimedia
> > applications. AMD will point to Athlon's superior performance on
> > benchmarks like SysMark.
> > Intel undoubtedly wishes that Pentium 4 beat Athlon on SysMark. But the
> > designers made the right choice in emphasizing multimedia performance. As
> > Intel's flagship PC processor for at least the next four years, Pentium 4
> > is designed to excel on tomorrow's software, not yesterday's.
> > LInley Gwennap is the Founder and Principal Analyst of the Linley Group
> > (www.linleygroup.com <http://www.linleygroup.com>
> > <<http://www.linleygroup.com>>), a Technology Analysis firm in Mountain
> > View, Calif.
> > |
