Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Technology Stocks : Rambus (RMBS) - Eagle or Penguin -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: richard surckla who wrote (61775)	11/24/2000 4:43:51 PM
From: Don Green	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 93625

Intel unwraps Pentium 4 Friday, Nov. 24, 2000 1:01 pm PT By Dan Neel Chip initially offers speed, with improvements to follow INDEPENDENT benchmarking numbers performed on Intel's new Pentium 4 processor indicate less-than-revolutionary performance, and an improved version is already set to arrive next year. Nevertheless, Intel is betting that record-breaking clock speed will provide the appeal for early adopters and ward off criticism from skeptics, according to those familiar with the technology. Officially launched this week, the Pentium 4 chip from the Santa Clara, Calif.-based Intel is set to arrive in a number of high-end PCs and workstations from top-tier manufacturers such as Armonk, N.Y.-based IBM; Round Rock, Texas-based Dell; and Houston-based Compaq. But in benchmarking tests performed by independent Internet hardware testing sites such as Tom's Hardware Guide and Hard/OCP, the first versions of the new Pentium 4 have not fared well in comparison to either its predecessor, the Pentium III processor, or the high-speed Athlon processor line from Sunnyvale, Calif.-based Advanced Micro Devices, a key Intel competitor. A 1GHz Pentium III processor outperformed a 1.5GHz Pentium 4 clocked back to 1GHz in six out of eight performance benchmarks, according to Tom's Hardware Guide. The results were similar when comparing an AMD Athlon processor against the Pentium 4 with both chips operating at 1.2GHz. Both testing sites agreed, however, that the Pentium 4 will soon outrun the next several scheduled processor releases from AMD when considering sheer speed alone, an accomplishment that could have Intel retaining the title of fastest processor for some time to come. Martin Reynolds, an analyst at San Jose, Calif.-based Dataquest, believes Intel is betting on the newly designed NetBurst architecture of the Pentium 4 to take the chip to future speeds and performance levels not found in the initial versions. To make his point, Reynolds emphasizes the chip's Hyper Pipelined Technology, which gives it a 20-stage pipeline in which to execute software instructions -- twice that of the 10-stage pipeline of the Pentium III. "The way the [Pentium 4] is designed, with the 20-stage pipeline, I think we can expect to see speeds of over 3GHz next year, even though Intel is only saying 2GHz," Reynolds said. Intel already plans to release an improved version of the Pentium 4, code-named Foster, in the second half of next year, according to company officials. The improved Foster chip will be able to take on dual processing tasks the current Pentium 4 is not capable of handling. In the meantime, Intel will continue to rely on its top-end Pentium III and Xeon chips for almost another year to satisfy the dual processor requirements of servers and many workstations, officials said. The Pentium III and the Xeon chips will remain Intel's staple for business PCs and servers, while the Pentium 4 pays immediate dividends to gamers and performance enthusiasts. Reynolds sees processor speed, not dual processing, as the early proving ground for the Pentium 4. "In the case of the Pentium 4, it isn't about dual processing, it's about speed," Reynolds said. Other features of Intel's NetBurst architecture include a rapid execution engine that executes basic math instructions at twice the speed of the rest of the processor, a 400MHz system bus, more than twice the speed of the Pentium III's average 133MHz bus, an advanced 256KB Transfer Cache, and added streaming audio and video technology.