Jozef, Part 1: Geeks are shortsighted, will repent. Anandtech on what was seen at IDF (follow link to see graphics)
greg
www1.anandtech.com
Intel Developer Forum Conference - Spring 2001: Part 1
Date: March 05, 2001
Type: Trade Shows
Manufacturer: Various
Author: Anand Lal Shimpi
Page: 1
Currently, Intel is far from the most popular CPU manufacturer among the enthusiast community. During the days of the Pentium II and Celeron, when AMD's most fierce competition was the AMD K6-X line of processors, the community was definitely much more appreciative of Intel processors. In fact, looking at the stats from our System Rigs Database for AnandTech Forums users we see that there are still 13% more users running Intel CPUs than there are with AMD CPUs.
This isn't to discredit what AMD has been able to do with the Athlon. Had the Athlon not been the success it is today, that 13% gap would have widened considerably. Combined with the weakened Intel product line towards the end of 1999 and the lackluster performance of the Pentium 4 in today's applications and benchmarks, it isn't surprising that AMD has been the choice of many lately.
At this year's Spring Intel Developer Forum Conference the tone was of a completely different nature than what we have seen at IDF for the past few sessions. Within the course of this article you will not only learn about some very interesting technology from Intel for use in the server market, but you will also see their plans for DDR SDRAM and RDRAM, a chipset with 6.4GB/s of memory bandwidth, the return of the Memory Translator Hub and much more.
A different type of IDF
If you remember this time one year ago, there was a lot of activity at IDF as the Pentium 4, then going under the codename Willamette, was first revealed to the public. We got the chance to see the first glimpse of what a 1.5GHz processor looked like and we were shocked by the fact that the Willamette's Integer units would operate at twice that frequency: 3GHz.
Later that year, the Pentium 4 was released and although it offered clearly advanced technology on paper it would not perform well in any of today's applications and games. A lower clocked Pentium III or Athlon would easily trump the Pentium 4 even while the latter was running at a 25% higher clock speed. However passing judgment on the Pentium 4 wasn't as simple as we had originally thought.
There isn't a doubt about it that the performance of Rambus DRAM (RDRAM) on the Pentium III platform was poor at best. Realizing that the Pentium 4 actually benefited from RDRAM helped us understand exactly why Intel pushed for RDRAM so early, even though the Pentium III couldn't offer the performance improvement both Intel and Rambus were promising. The Pentium 4 is a completely different beast, its 100MHz Quad-pumped FSB keeps the processor fed with data and coupling it with an equally bandwidth powerful memory bus is necessary to keep its performance levels high enough. We have already illustrated this not too long ago in our review of the VIA KT133A chipset in explaining why the performance improvement gained from DDR SDRAM on the AMD 760 isn't as great as we'd like to think.
At this IDF, the tone was definitely more sedated. There was much less marketing hype surrounding the show and more of an idea of looking towards the future. The Pentium 4 has been released, and Intel will be ramping up production of it faster than they ever have in the past. And for the first time since AnandTech has been visiting IDF we really got a chance to see Intel focus on the future rather than trying to explain why current performance is the way it is.
There's less hype for the press to write about, but there's actually worlds more information and technology to digest. Let's get started.
Page: 2
"Putting an end to the Performance Debate"
In our Pentium 4 Review, we stated that the Pentium 4's success is clearly dependent upon a few events occurring. The most important two being that the Pentium 4 must ramp in clock speed very quickly and that its SSE2 instruction set must be taken advantage of. While Intel isn't changing their roadmap any from what we have already told you about, we did get more confirmation as to the Pentium 4's future.
There is definitely a very poised attitude around Intel about the future performance of the Pentium 4. History has shown us that as we move forward, applications and games become much more bandwidth intensive as they adapt to what the hardware industry can offer. If you don't believe it, then go back to running using a 66MHz memory bus and see how freely the frames fly in Quake III, or how quickly you can render a scene in 3D Studio MAX.
So if the software and applications of tomorrow are going to be more bandwidth intensive, the Pentium 4 should do just fine, right? Having a Front Side Bus (FSB) capable of transferring 3.2GB/s of data (peak theoretical), and a memory bus capable of feeding that very same amount of data, the Pentium 4 is set to tackle the most bandwidth intensive of applications. That's exactly why Intel refuses to focus on anything but MP3 and Video encoding performance with the Pentium 4. They even ran a FlasK encoding demo at the first Keynote at IDF.
The issue of SSE2 optimizations is really in the hands of the developers. Intel has made public their latest compilers and tuning software that helps the developer include SSE2 optimizations wherever possible. With AMD's decision to support SSE2 with their x86-64 line of processors, there isn't much question that SSE2 will be taken advantage of in the future.
However both of these issues can only rely on time to tell the story. What Intel can do and what they are going to do to speed up the process is, of course, speed up the processor. The Pentium 4 is still on course to receive its die shrink in the second half of this year, and that will hopefully finally give some end to the Pentium 4 performance debate.
We got confirmation that the 0.13-micron Pentium 4 (codename Northwood) will debut at above 2GHz, although there are going to be versions at lower speeds as well. This core will have a much smaller die size than the Pentium 4 (approximately 1/2 the size of the 217 mm^2 current P4). Intel may actually use the smaller die to increase the cache size of the Pentium 4 to 512KB although we still have not received confirmation on this.
A 2.1 - 2.5GHz Pentium 4 could offer tremendous performance, finally differentiating itself from Intel's Pentium III, which has continued to be the better option for performance in today's applications. If you are going to be going down the Pentium 4 route, it is definitely best to wait for the 0.13-micron Pentium 4.
Intel actually had an air-cooled (using a normal heatsink/fan) demonstration of a 2GHz Pentium 4 at the show.
The question that does remain unanswered is: will Intel's next incarnation of the Pentium 4 be nothing more than a die shrink with more cache, or will the blue group decide that current application performance is an important factor to consider and maybe re-architect some of the P4 core?
We've previously positioned the Pentium 4 as analogous to the Pentium Pro. If you remember back to 1995 when the Pentium Pro was introduced, its 16-bit performance was clearly a disappointment, even to the point where it was lower than that of the regular Pentium. But Intel said that 32-bit code was the future (and they were not lying), therefore somehow justifying the Pentium Pro's poor 16-bit performance. When push came to shove however, the very next incarnation of the Pentium Pro's P6 architecture had received some definite architectural improvements, as the Pentium II was much more of a 16-bit application performer than the Pentium Pro.
The true test will be to see how much Intel believes in the Pentium 4's architecture as is or if they will make some architectural changes when the Northwood's introduction rolls around later this year.
We titled this section "Putting an end to the Performance Debate" for a reason, because it was a quote from a very high level Intel employee in regards to the Northwood. Take that for what it's worth; in a few months we'll provide you with benchmarks to either support or oppose that statement. |
