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To: Scumbria who wrote (127534)	2/16/2001 1:59:02 PM
From: fingolfen	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 186894

BTW: Yelling does not change the facts. ...and neither does calling other people dumb... If you really want to deal with it on an engineering level, then we can. Cooling to 72C is hardly "cooling" when compared to kryotech which frequently approaches or drops below 0C. If the chip can be cooled with a fan + heatsink, then it's not being cryo-cooled in any legitimate sense of the word. The heatsink and fan systems for the P4 are well within the norm seen for any other processor... There is one bit of engineering you may not have considered. 72C is an ambient across the die temperature, as they are for the P3 and the K7. However, while the architecture of the P3 and K7 are quite similar in many ways, the P4 has an interesting wrinkle that you may not have considered: the 2X clock ALU's. What if the P4 die has "hot spots" that are out of the norm for previous generation microprocessors requiring a lower average temperature to provide margin for those to run at 80C, 90C, or higher? The P4 for good or ill is unlike any other x86 processor out there. It isn't always going to play by the same rules we've come to know and love for the last 5 or 6 years... Now, as to the P3 vs. the P4 and relative speed increases... let's take a hard look at the facts and see what we discover: The P3E is a generation 6.X chip... the core is still the 6th generation core, but it has the heck optimized out of it. Right now it's stuck at 1.0GHz, I would expect to still see the 1.13GHz chip come out on the 0.18 micron process. I don't think they'll get another grade above that (the next one would be a 1.27GHz if I do my math correctly). The core, however, is almost 7 years OLD! Objectively that's quite an accomplishment... The K7 in terms of scalability is really not a heck of a lot better than the P3... it's got a couple of speed grades, but I would expect a lot more scalability to call it a true 7th generation processor. Vanilla K7 crapped out a 1GHz. Thunderbird only got AMD up to 1.2GHz. I expect Palomino probably won't get past 1.4 on 0.18 micron. If they go to 0.15 micron, they may get a 1.5-6, but I will be very surprised if they're able to get a 1.7GHz chip before they transition to 0.13 micron. The P4 is already running at 1.5GHz, with 1.7GHz due out soon. With 0.13 micron production of the P4 only a couple of quarters away, the P4 will blow past the 2.0GHz mark before the end of the year. The "facts" may always be plain, but only when you're in possession of all of the facts. In an industry that changes as rapidly as the semiconductor industry does, the only people who actually have all of the facts are insiders under NDA... and they aren't posting here. If they are, they'll never tell a third of what they really know. ...so based on the facts that we all have available, I find it far more likely that the lower temperature spec on the P4 is because of an unusual thermal profile than because it is being "overclocked."

To: Scumbria who wrote (127534)	2/16/2001 2:03:04 PM
From: Elmer	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 186894

Re: "P4 is being overclocked, and PIII is stalled at 1GHz" You're wrong about this. An overclocked device is one that is run outside the manufacturers specifications. So as Intel specs the P4 under the conditions being discussed, it can not be overclocked, by definition. The reason most devices will run outside specifications is because of reliability guardbands(hot electrons, electromigration, gate oxide reliability etc). Run the device outside of spec(overclocked) and you risk reliability problems. The P4 is not overclocked. Get over it. EP