The current Pentium 4 is now almost right at the specified 80% level of efficiency they planned for it. All in all, between the final 2.0 GHz .18 micron Pentium 4, and today's 2.4 GHz .13 micron Pentium 4, Intel has delivered about a 25% to 30% measured performance increase in the space of only 3 months.
25-30% improvement from 20% clock increase is pretty good! And it won't stop there. With a 533MHz FSB the numbers will look even better. This is exactly what Intel told us back when they introed Willamette and the Droids called it a bad design. Faster busses, design enhancements like the one you described and others still to come, larger caches, easily scaling frequencies, hyperthreading still to appear on the DT, upcoming 90nm technology, more metal layers, smaller die, 300mm wafers, a manufacturing system hitting on all cylinders, you name it. The P4 has yet to show it's real potential and already it's left the competition in the dust!
EP |