Has this been posted? If so it is still worth repeating, from Alan81 on Motley Fool:
I am pretty surprised by the performance and power of the prescott processor. It is clearly "not ready" yet, compared to my expectations. I think it is at a point where the performance is about the same as 130nm, the power is higher than 130nm, and I bet the cost is about the same as 130nm. So why did Intel introduce the thing? I think there are a few answers to this...
(1) They promised they would, and they need to keep their promises.
This is a pretty weak reason, which is why I think the next one is more important.
(2) 90nm is mostly new capacity in new 300mm factories. They needed to free up 130nm for several reasons, the most important of which is the new large die, larger cache Xeon's, which need more fab space. As Itanium ramps it will need more fab space too. They need to move to the new socket T, and grantsdale chipset, which I believe is built on 130nm. Finally, they need to take a factory off-line in order to get it converted to 300mm in time for the 65nm ramp. The trick was making sure that even though 90nm was late and underperforming, it did not result in everything behind it also being delayed. The prescott was "good enough" to set everything in motion. |
