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To: Cirruslvr who wrote (107821)	8/20/2000 10:59:39 PM
From: Jim McMannis	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 186894

Cirrus, RE:"It is STUCK with DRDRAM initially. This could prove to be Willy's achilles heel" This is what keeps me in AMD. Although, I fully expect the press and Analysts to fall all over themselves praising Willy and believing most of the Intel PR and benchmarks. Netburst??? Now that's a real gutbu(r)ster...<G> Then again, wasn't the Pentium III supposed to enhance our internet experience? Sure hope Athy can get to 1.4 Mhz by the end of the year...

To: Cirruslvr who wrote (107821)	8/21/2000 12:02:11 AM
From: Tony Viola	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 186894

Cirrus, you pick out some negative looking things about the P4, but don't mention this: As we mentioned in our initial coverage of the CPU, the Pentium 4's Arithmetic Logic Units (ALUs) operate at twice the core clock frequency. This means that on a 1.4GHz Pentium 4, the ALUs are effectively running at 2.8GHz and on the 1.5GHz Pentium 4 demo we saw 6 months ago, the ALUs were effectively running at an impressive 3.0GHz. Intel refers to this feature as the NetBurst architecture's Rapid Execution Engine. or this, very big advantage P4 In terms of the bandwidth available to and from the L2 cache, a hypothetical Pentium III clocked at 1.5GHz would have 24GB/s of available bandwidth to and from the L2 cache, while a Pentium 4 clocked at the same speed would have 48GB/s of available bandwidth because it is able to transfer data on every clock. This is one area where the Athlon (Thunderbird) has a disadvantage, because the chip features a 64-bit path to its L2 cache whereas the Pentium III/4 feature a 256-bit datapath to its L2 cache. Then there's the Execution Trace Cache. It will ONLY work in single processor configurations. NO dual Willy workstations. Elmer - you have always crowed about Intel ALWAYS offering SMP with P6 family processors and lambasted AMD for not offering SMP for the Athlon yet. What's your defense for Intel not offering SMP with Willy? No mention of Foster, the Willy for workstations/servers that should work in multiprocessor configurations. Foster is on Intel's roadmap as the chip for midrange workstations and low end servers. That roadmap was discussed here yesterday. Looks like you guys are looking under rocks and around trees for any P4 weaknesses. Tony

To: Cirruslvr who wrote (107821)	8/21/2000 12:11:33 AM
From: Elmer	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 186894

Re: "Elmer - you have always crowed about Intel ALWAYS offering SMP with P6 family processors and lambasted AMD for not offering SMP for the Athlon yet. What's your defense for Intel not offering SMP with Willy?" What I have said is Intel has never shipped a chipset die that didn't support SMP. If this report is true, and I'm not sure it is, then it looks as though Intel has decided to differentiate their product line. BTW I think there is something misleading about the description of Intel's L1 & L2 caches. I believe the trace cache would ordinarily be called L0 and what is being called L2 would normally be called L1. If these reports are correct then P4 has an off-die L2(L3). Is it possible that future versions of P4 will have 3 levels of on-die cache as the device moves to a .13u process and space allows? All speculation of course. EP

To: Cirruslvr who wrote (107821)	8/21/2000 2:05:17 AM
From: Tenchusatsu	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 186894

Cirrus, <Its L1 data cache is 8 Kilobytes - the same size as the original Pentium's that came out in 1993! For comparison, the Athlon's L1 data cache is 64 KB and the PIII's is 16 KB.> L1 data cache may be small for a very good reason: high clock speeds. <It dissipates 52W (at 1.4GHz I assume...) vs. the 1.13GHz PIII's 35.5W vs. the 1.1GHz Athlon's 55.5W.> Yeah, the power consumption of Pentium 4 isn't trivial. This should get better once Northwood is released in the middle of 2001. <What's your defense for Intel not offering SMP with Willy?> You'll see ... <It is STUCK with DRDRAM initially. This could prove to be Willy's achilles heel.> RDRAM prices have really fallen as of late, perhaps due to the decrease in demand. I don't think the price of RDRAM is going to be much of an issue when Pentium 4 is released in initial low volumes. DRAM volumes become an even bigger concern once Northwood pushes Pentium 4 into high-volume space. That's when sole reliance on RDRAM won't cut it anymore. Tenchusatsu