April 12 2004:

Welcome Back,

Its been quite a while since my last report. ( I have written a 3 part article for Mixdown in the down time , which you can read here) . The original plan was to hold off until Intel got their shite together and officially release Prescott, so I could get a better grounding on how the battlefield was shaping up. After originally expecting Prescott to land late last year, I wasn’t planning on such a long hiatus between drinks, but alas, not everything goes to plan when we are dealing with the technology circus.

So here we are !!

The first section of this article covering Prescott has been published in Mixdown –March Edition. I have updated and extended the article to include our friends from Cheapzilla and Fruitzilla.. Enjoy :-)

Taking a leaf out of AMD's book, Intel finally paper launched the .09 Micron Prescott Series of PIV on February 1st. Well lets just say that after all of the hoopla that the tech community had stirred up, I can only say a collective yawn was all that most of us could muster. Sparking memories of the first Willamette PIV’s, Prescott is proving slower, and hotter than the current Northwood PIV’s (and minus the rumored 64 Bit extensions) Snore!! It looked like Chipzilla had struck out, big time. but alas, all was not as it seemed.

On Feb. 16 Intel officially announced their CT (Clakamass Technology, sorry, what was that, “ Crack In My Ass “?) 64 bit extensions for both the new Series of Xeon and Prescott PIV ranges.

What About Cheapzilla? Well despite having the performance advantage for the last 3-4 months, AMD have idled their way thru the New Year without really being able to consolidate the momentum that they had garnered with the 64-bit Athlon 64/ Opteron range. Not to be out done, our old favorite Fruitzilla (Apple) have also been feverishly banging the 64bit drum, mind you, without really having anything to show for all of the noise they have been making.

Now with the Evil Empire also on the 64 bit desktop wagon, it’s going to be very interesting to see what spin the 3 Tribes are going to try on the unsuspecting public.

Ah Yes, the Circus is definitely back, .. Buckle Up…

Intel Prescott: Is It Getting Hot In Here?
Is been a long road for the PIV from the Dog .18 nm “Willamette“ Series to the latest revision .09 Prescott. Many thought the transition to the latest offering would be the typical scenario of a die shrink, pumping the cache, and bumping up the clock speed. This in the past has netted Chipzilla with a smaller, cooler and faster chip than the predecessor. Well, not this time.
So what did we get? On Paper Launch Day, Prescott was released at speeds of 2.8 to 3.4 Ghz, along side 3.4 GHz Northwood versions, both Standard and Extreme Editions. The last of the line!
*Update * “ Its been over 8 weeks since Paper launch, and the only Prescott to hit the showroom floor has been the 2.8 Ghz slug “

In regards to Prescott, Intel promised next to nothing with this chip, and on the surface, it looks like they managed to deliver. :-) Sure we’ve got the die shrink from .13 to, 09 nm, we have double the L1 and L2 cache, 13 new instructions (whhooo-eee SSE3 .. Yawn), improved branch prediction, etc,etc. All good I hear you say, unfortunately we also have an Instruction pipeline that has increased from an already huge 20 stages, to an elaphantile (is that even a word?) 31 stages. Say What!! Man that’s going to do wonders to the IPC (Instruction Per Clock) NOT ! That coupled with increased latency in the caches, and a thermal heat dissipation over 103 Watts, and we have on our sleeves a possible tail wagger of the highest order. Yep this puppy is slower clock for clock than the current Northwood, and runs a good 5 –10 degrees hotter. Whoooa, hold me back. Not really much to entice the tech community to hop aboard.

Something isn’t quite right here though. Despite the 50% extra pipeline length, performance is not that far behind the Northwood, thermal performance aside. The other interesting thing is that as the clock speed goes up, the clock for clock performance delta decreases. There is definitely some technical wizardry hiding under the surface, and as the clock frequency passes the Northwood’s 3.4 Ghz, we will see Prescott draw away dramatically. There is a bit of “ smoke and mirrors” surrounding this chip at the moment. The current 478 pin paper launch pimp is going to have the shortest life span of any chip Intel have ever released, with the 775 pin LGA socket version expected in about 2-3 months. Why was this dog was even let out of its cage? * Update * “ 775 release now shifted back to June –July”

Its obvious that for Intel to keep scaling their Processor lines to the expected 5 Ghz +, that some major architectural changes would have to be made, but these clock speeds are planned for the next series of processor (Tejas). Another interesting question is, what are all of those millions of extra transistors that have been crammed into the new die, that mysteriously don’t seem to be doing anything at the moment ? Hmmmm. And by the way, where the hell are those rumored 64-bit extension? Hold the phone. Bling !!!! Intel is obviously testing the water with some newer technologies that they plan on introducing as they see fit. Lets not forget Hyperthreading was implemented all along, but was dormant until almost 18 months into the PIV’s life cycle.

And Then There Where 3:

Enter CT, Clakamass Technology, formally known as Yamill, Intel’s 64 bit extensions for the X86 platform.
* Update * Now official known as EM64 T * . On Feb. 16th Intel finally confirmed that they were introducing 64 bit extensions on the new series of Xeon (Nacona) processors that are due next quarter, with the Prescott getting the instructions shortly after. This coincides with the introduction of the 775 pin LGA version of the chip and the new Grantsdale and Alderswood chipsets. Surprise!!

The question is still raging whether the instructions are 100 % compatible with AMD’s “ AMD64 “ instructions, with Intel being pretty coy whether they have actually used the core x86-64 code developed by AMD, or whether they have an extended code that is at least somewhat compatible. Most analysts agree that the CT code is in most respects identical to AMD’s, but due to an agreement signed years ago by the 2 companies to share technologies, Intel has no obligation to admit or announce that they are in fact using the competitors code, which frustratingly for Cheapzilla, isn’t allowing them to gain any brownie points in the hype department. In the end, all that is important is that the 2 technologies are compatible with Windows XP-64/2003 -64, which from all reports, they are.

I covered the 64 Bit scenario last month, so I won’t repeat myself here, suffice to say that by the time a 64 bit O.S, driver support and applications are considered mainstream, all of these shenanigans will be a distant memory. We are still talking years, not months, so all of this 64-bit nonsense is little more than posturing for the foreseeable future. Hopefully Chipzilla can reign in the thermal problems they are having with the current Dog 478 Prescott, and re launch the 775 LGA version with some decent clock speeds and thermal spec’s, or we could be seeing our future systems doubling as microwaves. * Update * With the reported delay of Windows 64 for both AMD64 and EM64T, now not being expected until very late 04 or early 05, It is no surprise that Intel have announced the 64 bit extensions for Prescott will not see the light of day until 05. Interestingly Intel announced the delay weeks before Microsoft ??, So who is actually driving this Bus ?? Certainly not poor old Cheapzilla, with their AMD 64 campaign not really meaning diddly until the O.S see’s the light of day…conspiracy theorist can line up to the left .. :-)

You can read thru some review fodder here, here, and here