Conclusion

Obviously, that's only a brief glimpse at the processor histories of AMD and Intel, with a vague picture of the future. Dual core designs should start appearing within the next year, and rumors of quad core processors are also floating around the web. At some point, we will likely reach the limits of current manufacturing technologies, but that day is still a long ways off. AMD and Intel both have technologies in development that should carry us past 45 nm process technologies, and probably down to single digits in our lifetime. That's assuming we don't get quantum computers first, that make all of the current binary systems seem quaint by comparison.

The amount of processing power sitting in front of you right now was beyond comprehension a couple decades ago. Even the "average" computers of today would seem amazing to people even one decade in the past. Ten years ago, 3D was only dreamt about, and professional 3D accelerators cost thousands of dollars while doing far less that a "cheap" GeForce 3 or Radeon 8500. Ten years ago, 32-bit processors were still looking for a real operating system, and 64-bit was only used by governments and research centers. Ten years ago, a 100 MHz processor was as good as it got. Ten years ago, few people had ever used a networked computer at home, and 28.8 modems were amazingly fast. Here's hoping the gurus at AMD, Intel, and other companies can continue to amaze us for another ten years!

Stay tuned for more insider articles from Jarred, including a much anticipated GPU cheat sheet as well!

Concerning Intel...
Comments Locked

74 Comments

View All Comments

  • Maverick Shiva - Thursday, November 25, 2004 - link

    The Articles are really beautiful.
    This was the complete description of the processors that are released and yet to be released.

    The technical details are really awsome and minute to the Detail.

    I would recommend that if you had Anand Tech.com then you are really tech Savvy.
  • JarredWalton - Saturday, September 18, 2004 - link

    #72 - the article is now slightly outdated, being a whopping 20 days old. Sorry. We'll look at updating this with future articles, of course.
  • Assimilator1 - Friday, September 17, 2004 - link

    An excellent article:)

    Though as someone mentioned the Semperon 2300 is missing ,this is clocked at 1.583GHz.
    Its listed in AMDs model 8 data sheets
  • endrebjorsvik - Wednesday, September 15, 2004 - link

    A very nice article with lost of good information!!

    Is there anybody who has all these datas collected into somethong like an exel-file or something.
  • jenand - Wednesday, September 8, 2004 - link

    JarredWalton: If you are going to update the roadmaps. Here is some good Itanium Info:
    http://www.intel.com/design/itanium2/download/Madi...
  • jenand - Wednesday, September 8, 2004 - link

    JarredWalton: If you are going to update the roadmaps. Here is some good Itanium Info:
    http://www.intel.com/design/itanium2/download/Madi...
  • romanl - Tuesday, September 7, 2004 - link

    Why is the Sempron 2300+ missing from a list of AMD CPUs?
  • IntelUser2000 - Thursday, September 2, 2004 - link

    It was said that Willamette has 33% superior branch prediction due to its 4KB BTB buffer compared to Pentium III's(P3's had 512B).

    It was also said Pentium M's have 20% superior branch prediction to previous generation. Since we know that the major enhancements on branch prediction for Pentium M is enhanced indirect branch prediction and no BTB buffer increase, its likely its 20% over P3.

    Dothan does have superior branch prediction to 0.13 micron Pentium M, but it would probably be minor compared to Pentium 4's 33% superiority over P3.

    Taking P3 as baseline,
    -Pentium 4 adds 33% using 8x increase in BTB buffer, or 4KB compared to 512B
    -Banias takes P3 and puts enhancements to indirect branch predictor, which gives 20%
    -Prescott takes 33% from Willamette AND 20% from Banias
    -Dothan has Banias' 20% improvements plus something minor

    You say: " However, with the doubling of the cache size on Dothan, I can't imagine Intel would leave it with inferior branch prediction."

    Yeah but I can't imagine that Prescott will have inferior branch prediction than Dothan since its needed more on Prescott. And looking at per clock enhancements Dothan is not much faster than Banias, except Content Creation apps, telling again the enhancements are minor.


    Remember we are talking about how superior one branch predictor would be over another with same pipelines.

    I think of it this way: In terms of worst to best

    Pentium III
    Banias
    P4 Willamette/Northwood/Dothan(I still think 33% improvement over P6 is greater than 20% in Banias+Dothan improvements)
    Prescott


    Oh yeah, there will be 4MB Fanwood parts but at 1.6GHz.

    Also since Itanium's core is half the size of Xeon and Intel also mentioned there will be twice the number of cores that Xeon has and Tukwila will be introduced ~2007 with quad-core Xeon then, Tukwila will have 8-core with Hyperthreading. Montecito is rumored to already have 600mm2 die size. Montecito has 24MB but Tukwila is rumored to have 32MB, not a lot increase, to possibly save space for more cores?

    I mean, Sun plans 32-core designs.

    Link: www.mikeshardware.co.uk
  • JarredWalton - Wednesday, September 1, 2004 - link

    Jenand, just an update, but it appears that Fanwood might not have 9M parts. The latest Intel roadmap talks about "Madison 9M/Fanwood/LV" parts in several places, but all the actual Fanwood parts are listed as 3M parts, and there's a not about pushing back the Fanwood 4M part.

    What is Fanwood? As of right now, I'm really not sure. Initially, I thought it was a renamed Madison, perhaps with more cache or for LV environments. Now, I'm starting to wonder if it might be a 90 nm version of Madison, or a version with more metal layers. Clock speeds are still in the Madison range, so that wouldn't really make sense, but why have the separate name if it's not somehow fundamentally different from Madison?

    And for what it's worth, the charts are now outdated somewhat with the announcement of the 6xx series of 2M L2 Pentium 4 parts. See latest Insider Stories.
  • jenand - Wednesday, September 1, 2004 - link

    Yes, Fanwood looks to be a 9MB L3 part. Strange. But i is limited to DP servers while Madison9M is for MP servers. just like Xeon MP end DP I guess.

    And no not many care about IA64 these days. Not strange. But with Millington I assume that will change! ;)

Log in

Don't have an account? Sign up now