Boris - Currently, Intel is shipping it's PentiumII 300Mhz
in a slot1 configuration for 66Mhz busses. The 333Mhz will
also be a slot1 for the 66Mhz bus. Early next year when
BX ships, the front side bus (Host) will increase to
100Mhz. Intel will ship Slot1 and Slot2 PentiumII's specifically
for this bus. You won't be able to tell the difference
by looking at the SEC cartridge whether it's designed
for 66 or 100Mhz FSB.
The easy way to tell is by the processor speed. 66Mhz FSB
processor speeds are in increments of 33Mhz e.g. 233, 266,
300, 333 whereas 100Mhz FSB will be in increments of 50Mhz..
300, 350 400, 450. Obviously, at 300 it's confusing.
You are correct, Slot1 SEC cartridge (what we call PentiumII)
integrates the processor and L2 cache as seperate components
on a small daughtercard.
For Slot1, the L2 cache runs at half core frequency, i.e
for 300Mhz, cache runs at 150Mhz. For slot2, L2 runs at
full core frequency and will come in sizes of 512k, 1Meg and
2Meg. This is where slot2 gets it's performance advantage
over slot1 and will be perferred in Servers and Workstations
initially.
Intel's reason for moving to the SEC cartridge design are many
but the main two are 1. SEC is proprietary and AMD/Cyrix won't
be able to manufacture pin-for-pin compatable replacements.
This leaves them with socket 7 or a SEC design of their own.
2. Yield improvements. Pentium integrates L2 cache die with
processor die in a single chip. If L2 fails test, you need to
throw the whole chip away. It's simply a more complex solution.
MEATHEAD |
