Thanks for the review. I find the author makes a lot of sense in what he says in the closing paragraphs.
"Looking more closely at the results of the benchmarks, the Pentium 4 appears to perform better in applications that exercise the whole system, as opposed to purely processor intensive tests. That's not to suggest that the P4 lacks raw computing horsepower--but it's focus is not pure computational speed. Instead, it's apparent that the architects of the Pentium 4 spent considerable time thinking about how to optimize the Pentium 4 so it performs well as part of a computing ecosystem, which includes the processor, the core logic and the memory subsystem.
This idea of a computing ecosystem also explains why some applications will need to be architected as well. Many current generation applications were optimized for systems in which overall system bandwidth was a scarce commodity. For example, making efficient use of available cache was an important factor. Programmers would write tight loops because they would fit neatly in the cache. The Pentium 4's deeply pipelined architecture, coupled with a smaller L1 cache, doesn't play well with these types of applications. It will be interesting to see how Northwood, with its larger L2 cache, behaves with some of these older apps.
The Athlon was designed somewhat earlier, and reflects a time where the CPU had to have a lot of raw muscle to overcome deficiencies in system memory bandwidth. Athlon4, with its hardware prefetch and SSE instructions, represents a more holistic approach, but it's following in Intel's footsteps in this regard, rather than breaking new ground. Early indications with AthlonMP. indicate that these features, though simply bolted onto the existing Athlon architecture, have resulted in a measurable performance improvement.
The 2GHz Pentium 4 represents both a beginning and an ending. It's the beginning of the Socket-478 line of CPUs, but it's probably the last of the 0.18 micron Pentium 4's. With Northwood on the horizon, with its probable larger cache and likely higher clockrates, the 2GHz Pentium 4 may seem like an anachronism. At the same time, it's the fastest desktop CPU available today for most processing situations. It beats AMD's fastest shipping processor in a majority of the benchmarks. Artificial arguments about "processor efficiency" aside, it's the applications performance that counts. And the new Pentium 4 delivers excellent performance on a variety of applications. As more applications are optimized for the P4's unique architecture, performance will continue to increase.
Still, Intel has pulled off a coup: the first commercial desktop CPU to hit 2GHz. As we've seen, it's an excellent performer in most applications, and even when the Athlon wins, it only wins by a relatively small margin. Two gigahertz is also a nice round number that customers can get their arms around easily. Intel must certainly hope so."
wanna_bmw |
