Elmer, Kevin - Re: 375 MHz K6/0.25 micron and Chilled Klamath/Pentium II 0.35 micron device:
Here's one article describing a 433 MHz speed for Intel's older Pentium II/Klamath. This was " demoed" at last years' ISSCC conference.
Paul
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Intel makes it a race with
451MHz Klamath processor
By Andy Santoni
InfoWorld Electric
Posted at 5:59 PM PT, Feb 7, 1997
SAN FRANCISCO -- While the microprocessor horsepower race still
goes to Digital's Alpha architecture at 600 MHz, Intel on Friday
surprised attendees at the International Solid State Circuits
Conference here by disclosing that it has pushed the P6 Pentium Pro
architecture to as fast as 451 MHz.
Scheduled to present a paper on a 300-MHz Klamath processor,
Mustafiz R. Choudhury, design manager at Intel's Microprocessor
Products group, in Santa Clara, Calif., instead disclosed that the
processor is running at 433 MHz. And, he said, Intel researchers have
seen 451-MHz operation in the laboratory.
Choudhury called the device "the highest performance Intel
Architecture-compatible microprocessor." The 7.5 million-transistor
processor offers a projected performance of about 12 SPECint95 in
its 300-MHz version, he said.
However, Choudhury stressed that the processor is a technology
disclosure and not an available product. The device's power
dissipation bears this out. While he would not say how much power
the chip dissipates, Choudhury admitted that it requires an ice-water
heat sink to maintain an operational temperature.
A system based on the device and running at 400 MHz was
demonstrated for the press after Choudhury's presentation, and this
computer required a cooling system hidden under the table.
However, the chip is built with Intel's existing 0.35-micron fabrication
technology, and so can be built on Intel's existing production lines. The
chip also features the MMX multimedia instruction set extensions,
external Level 2 cache, and Single Edge Contact (SEC) package that
Intel has described as the technologies it will use in future processors.
Performance improvements are due in part to on-chip instruction and
data caches that, at 16KB, are twice the size of previous P6
processors. In addition, the Level 2 cache bus supports a variety of
cache sizes and configurations. For example, Choudhury pointed out,
"these L2 caches can be constructed using synchro-nous burst static
RAMs for data and optional ECC [error-correcting code] storage and
the Intel 82459AB tagram for tag, state, and LRU bit storage."
Leading the performance race, however, is Digital Equipment Corp.'s
Alpha processor, which has jumped from 500 MHz to 600 MHz. The
21264, built with 15.2 million transistors, delivers 40 SPECint95 and
60 SPECfp95 performance, in part through its 64KB instruction and
data caches.
Digital Semiconductor's 21164 processor has sped from 500 MHz to
550 MHz. Like the 21264, it features 13 added instructions to support
multimedia applications.
Also at the show:
Exponential Technology Inc. described its 533-MHz PowerPC
processor, which gets its speed from adding bipolar logic to the
conventional CMOS design;
IBM's T.J. Watson Research Center in Yorktown Heights, N.Y., has
developed an S/390 architecture microprocessor for mainframe
applications that operates at 400 MHz. The device is part of IBM's
program to migrate its mainframe designs from bipolar to CMOS
designs;
Sun Microsystems Inc., in Mountain View, Calif., described a
330-MHz UltraSPARC processor; and
Advanced Micro Devices described its 233-MHz K6 processor with
MMX multimedia exten-sions.
Intel Corp., in Santa Clara, Calif., is at intel.com. Digital
Equipment Corp., in Maynard, Mass., is at digital.com.
Exponential Technology Inc., in San Jose, Calif., is at
exp.com. IBM, in Somers, N.Y., is at ibm.com.
Sun Microsystems Inc., in Mountain View, Calif., is at
sun.com.
Please direct your comments to InfoWorld Electric News Editor Dana Gardner. |
