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Intel Hardware Technology

Intel Delays Release of 4Ghz Chips 175

Posted by CowboyNeal from the technical-difficulties dept.
bizpile writes "The AP is reporting that Intel's faster version of the Pentium 4 will not be available by the end of the year as previously promised. They told PC makers this week that the 4-gigahertz chip will not ship until the first quarter of 2005. Intel spokeswoman Laura Anderson said, 'We felt by adjusting the schedule for the products, we could better meet our customers' volume requirements and their high expectations.'"
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Intel Delays Release of 4Ghz Chips More

Intel Delays Release of 4Ghz Chips

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  • no 64? (Score:1, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    when are they plannin on keepin up with amd? lets see some high encryption with the 64bit procs

    • Re:no 64? (Score:3, Insightful)

      by aztracker1 ( 702135 )
      I beleive they are adding in the amd-64 extensions.. however, I think the problem may well be a production issue with stability, and heat in mind.. the 3.4ghz+ p4's seem to be doing a lot of throttling, or however it is they slow down to prevent heat issues... I think solutions similar to the heat-pipe in the shuttle xpc's will help a lot, but not sure where it is all going at this point.

    • Re:no 64? (Score:2, Informative)

      by osho_gg ( 652984 )
      64bit processors have nothing to do with "high encryption". 64 bits just signifies the unit for data and memory addressing. Osho

  • drunk (Score:1, Funny)

    by krosk ( 690269 )
    you know what? I'm drunk, and i don't care if Intel delays their chip shipments, cuz i'm only going to buy AMD chips anways!!! so delay away intel!! let's go AMD!!
    • Its funny that this was the highest rated comment when I clicked on this story.

      • Re:drunk (Score:2, Insightful)

        by krosk ( 690269 )
        isn't it though?
        amazingly enough, drunk people have some good insight. Because they throow away all the BS and just give you the stgraight truth!
        • oh yeah? well... you're so fat... you're like the Prescott's basic Integer pipeline!
          • i have no idea what that means... and i'm too drunk to figure it out.. but your one funny fellow. god bless... and go Cheney 04

        • Re:drunk (Score:2, Funny)

          by log2.0 ( 674840 )
          im drunk myself...

          anyway, I just bought a P4 2.8Ghz....WHY!?! Because Its cheap and it will do the job.

          AMD64 would be cool, yes.....but im poor so i take the cheap stuff...and as if ill pay AU$100 for another 200Mhz...silly intel :)
          • i understand completely... all my money goes to my bucardi. personally, i have a dell D800 laptop. (i know i know, my school had a deal on it, so i bought it) ... and my desktop is an AMD 800 thunderbird... talk about old school! it barely runs win XP, but i love it... It still runs and it runs well!!
    • :) I'd mod you up if I had points.

  • Shipping (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Zorilla ( 791636 ) on Saturday July 31, 2004 @02:54AM (#9851103)
    "We felt by adjusting the schedule for the products, we could better meet our customers' volume requirements and their high expectations," said Intel spokeswoman Laura Anderson on Friday. She declined to elaborate on the reason for the delay.

    When I first read the headline, I thought it may have done something with Intel not being confident enough for a release this year. But now, it sounds like a similar strategy compared to the new iMacs to me, where they delayed them to clear out the existing inventory.

    • Re:Shipping (Score:4, Informative)

      by coldcup ( 15234 ) on Saturday July 31, 2004 @03:19AM (#9851188) Homepage
      The new iMacs are not delayed to clear out inventory. You cannot buy an iMac now (At least in Australia). The production schedule for the current iMac was dependant on IBM producing G5 processors on target. IBM has not been. G5 iMac is delayed.

      I would think Intel is having the same problems as IBM has been having. They just can't get the yeild required for a mass market.

      • Re:Shipping (Score:3, Insightful)

        by Afrosheen ( 42464 )
        Man, how many years will Apple cry about supply problems for their damn CPUs? Haven't they had enough already? They ditched Motorola because they couldn't keep up in the past, now IBM is struggling to supply them. This is all for a niche market and big IBM can't meet demand. WTF Apple?

        One of these days these fools will port to x86, and the world will be a better place. I wonder just how many Windows and Linux users would switch to MacOSX if they could run it on their current hardware. And if it had games

        • Re:Shipping (Score:5, Informative)

          by SQL Error ( 16383 ) on Saturday July 31, 2004 @04:01AM (#9851285)
          Err...

          I note the article is about Intel being unable to supply processors on the promised schedule. Yes, I realise that there's AMD around as well, but I don't see how switching to x86 will solve Apple's problems.

          The basic issue with Motorola was that Moto weren't interested in developing new high-end CPUs. Apart from Apple, they were only targeting the embedded market.

          IBM, on the other hand, has to develop new high-end chips, because they are required for their P-series (RS/6000) and I-series (AS/400) servers. In fact, IBM has already produced the chip that the next-generation PowerPC will be based on - the Power5. (G5 Macs use the PowerPC 970, which is a cut-down version of the Power4.)

          The issue with higher clock speeds - whether from IBM or Intel - seems to be an industry-wide problem with the 90nm process. It's so bad that IBM has announced that "scaling is dead". See also the scary power dissipation of the new Pentium 4 chips.

        • Man, how many years will Apple cry about supply problems for their damn CPUs

          Exactly! I mean if they'd switched to x86 a long time ago they wouldn't have had a thing to complain about. No delays by motorola, no delays by IBM, no delays by intel... ...except for this BIG SIX MONTH DELAY BY INTEL.

          No difference no matter which way they go.
          • Doubtful that they'd be using this latest and greatest chip in any box they're shipping (with the exception of some SMP monster for video editing or whatever) anyway. It would be interesting to see how the AMD64 chips handle OSX.

  • Translating PR crap (Score:4, Funny)

    by livhan28 ( 749650 ) on Saturday July 31, 2004 @02:55AM (#9851108) Journal
    "We felt by adjusting the schedule for the products, we could better meet our customers' volume requirements and their high expectations."
    Translation = "full of bugs that cant be fixed in time"
    • Noo...

      Translation = "suppliers have too much inventory, we need to delay past Christmas buying frenzy or they'll be angry."
      • Translation of translation: The demand for the new Prescott P4s is a bit lower than "expected". Coz it's significantly hotter, and not really faster than the old chips. And it isn't really cheaper. A fair number of people are going for Northwoods instead of Prescotts. And a significant number are actually going AMD.
    • Translation = "full of bugs that cant be fixed in time"

      Exactly! And the same situation on your precious Mac computer, too. Steve Jobs promised me last year a 3.0 GHz G5 by now!

  • Payback is a bitch (Score:5, Interesting)

    by MikeCapone ( 693319 ) <skelterhell AT yahoo DOT com> on Saturday July 31, 2004 @02:56AM (#9851112) Homepage Journal
    Intel is still paying for their decision to go with the netburst architecture IMHO.

    They wanted to be able to crank the megahurtz and use that as a PR device (well, not only that but it helped them).

    Of course they are also having problem with the 90nm tech (as is IBM -- I think that only AMD has been mostly clear sailing with that), but most of their problems have come from netburst and lack of competitiveness in the budget sector (Celerons get killed by much faster and cheaper AMD chips).
    • nope, even AMD has had trouble ramping at 90nm look at how far tehy went last year with it, only 400 MHz.

      • Re:Payback is a bitch (Score:4, Informative)

        by SQL Error ( 16383 ) on Saturday July 31, 2004 @03:42AM (#9851241)
        We don't have any idea how AMD is doing with 90nm, because they haven't shipped anything at 90nm yet.

        SOI (Silicon on Insulator) yes, and that seems to have given them a bit of a boost, but no 90nm.

      • Re:Payback is a bitch (Score:5, Interesting)

        by NerveGas ( 168686 ) on Saturday July 31, 2004 @04:29AM (#9851347)

        There's a lot more to it than just how fast of a chip they can produce. Namely, how can they make the most money?

        Let's say that AMD could produce an Athlon64 4500+ right now. Would it be in their best interest to release it? Not really. The fastest chips tend to be the lowest yield - and it would greatly push down the cost of the lesser chips. Their best interest is to release a chip that's juuuuust fast enough to keep up with or beat Intel, and keep the pricing high enough to come in just a bit under intel's pricing for competitive models.

        In fact, each time Intel has actually released a faster chip lately, AMD has released a faster one as if it were no trouble at all. The way they've been doing, I wouldn't be surprised if they could release faster chips if there were an economic incentive to do so.

        steve
        • In fact, each time Intel has actually released a faster chip lately, AMD has released a faster one as if it were no trouble at all.

          I have an "AMD 2200+". This doesn't mean that it has a 2200 MHz CPU, this particular AMD part number is for a 1.8 GHz CPU. So, yes, AMD could release a "4500+" CPU right now, no problem at all. This "+" strategy for part numbering is a marketing scam. The reasoning behind it is that it's possible to make a benchmark where an 1.8 GHz AMD CPU outperforms a 2.2 GHz Intel CPU. Tru

          • Opteron/Athlon 64 and the S754 Semprons have SSE2 (being effectively a 64bit-free Newcastle).

          • No kidding, brainiac. Now tell us something we haven't already known for years.

            AMD actually does a pretty good job of labelling their chips - in common apps, an amd 2800+ (for example) does pretty much on par with a P4 2800. There isn't exact parity, some apps fall one way, some fall another, and occasional special apps fall greatly one way or another - but on the whole, the PR ratings are pretty close.

            steve
    • Well, it looks nobody, including Intel and IBM, had any idea how difficult moving to the 90nm process would be. What about 60nm? I think Moore's Law has finally run out of steam.
      • I think Moore's Law has finally run out of steam.

        Moore's Law, maybe. But my Athlon puts out plenty of steam... er... heat.

      • There are huge problems with current leakage at the 90nm node. So much so that power requirements have been trending upwards for a given design and clockspeed, for the first time ever. Major major major problem.

        This is from Bernie Meyerson, IBM's CTO:

        Somewhere between 130-nm and 90-nm the whole system fell apart. Things stopped working and nobody seemed to notice. Scaling is already dead but nobody noticed it had stopped breathing and its lips had turned blue.
      • I think Moore's Law has finally run out of steam.

        Moore's law is about the number of transistors, not about the surface area they occupy.

        I think that the dual-core chips that have been announced will keep the number of transistors increasing rapidly for a while.
        • From Moore's original paper:
          The complexity for minimum component costs has increased at a rate of roughly a factor of two per year (see graph on next page).
          Complexity for minimum component cost is not the number of transistors or their surface area. It's the sweet spot when you graph "relative manufacturing cost/component" against "number of components per integrated circuit".
      • Moore's Law is not about speed, it's about number of transistors on a chip doubling every 18 - 24 months. Performance and clock speed are results of this 'law.'

  • Versus (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Merovign ( 557032 ) on Saturday July 31, 2004 @02:56AM (#9851114)
    If what they say is true, then we're looking at a case of "ship crap now and get hammered" vs. "get hammered for being late."

    Probably shouldn't have announced it early, but the pressure was probably pretty heavy.

    I mean, look at Doom3 vs. HL2. Valve announced a date early and got hashed when they couldn't meet it. ID said "when it's ready." Looks like the wait time will be close to the same, but I don't see a lot of posts from people claiming ID is lying about how close they are...

    Oh... back to the topic clready? Oh, OK. :)

  • Clock speed doesn't matter, anyway (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Kujah ( 630784 ) on Saturday July 31, 2004 @02:58AM (#9851118) Homepage
    Clock speed really doesn't matter, anyway. Well, it's not as important a benchmark as Intel would have you think.

    If a processor running at 4ghz can only do half the operations per clock cycle that a 2ghz processor can do, than it's no better than the 2ghz processor, and probably worse due to larger instruction pipelines, etc.

    The fact that Intel has relied on this "Mhz Myth" has really killed sales of their Centrino (Pentium M) line of processors. Consumers see the (comparatively low) ghz ratings on the Centrinos (typically about 1.5ghz) and compare them to laptops with less expensive P4's (typically running between 2.5 to 3.5ghz) and wonder why anyone would pick the Centrinos.

    • Re:Clock speed doesn't matter, anyway (Score:5, Funny)

      by goMac2500 ( 741295 ) on Saturday July 31, 2004 @03:02AM (#9851140)
      What are you talking about? Haven't you seen those ads on TV? Theres plunty of people who know exactly what Centrino is about! Those Centrino laptops can get internet anywhere, for free! On top of mountains! In cinderblock classrooms! In construction sites! Laws of physics and WiFi range be damned! (Sorry, just an angry person who has to deal with confused buyers ranting)
    • True, but for the newer Intel chips, they've moving away from MHZ/GHZ [com.com] as of May.

      The new system is a dramatic change in Intel's marketing approach because it takes emphasis away from using clock speed as a main measure of performance. Instead, the system will strive to create a scenario in which a person choosing between several 300 series chips, for example, equates the decision to an exercise in choosing a good, better or best processor, sources familiar with the plan said.

    • The fact that Intel has relied on this "Mhz Myth" has really killed sales of their Centrino (Pentium M) line of processors. Consumers see the (comparatively low) ghz ratings on the Centrinos (typically about 1.5ghz) and compare them to laptops with less expensive P4's (typically running between 2.5 to 3.5ghz) and wonder why anyone would pick the Centrinos.

      This is probably very true in sales to average joe consumer, but not for the educated I.T. geek. I bought a Pentium-M 1.6GHz laptop for my dept at work
      • "Too bad most of the rest of the laptop-buying audience is too dense to look past the bling of clock speed numbers."

        Uh. It's hard to look past the bling of not enough money.

        The "Centrino" notebooks are significantly more expensive [dell.com] than the P4 ones.

        Even if the specs aren't the same, it's hard to buy a Centrino notebook that's cheaper. They're generally marketed as a more expensive range.

  • Funny Stuff (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Lord Kano ( 13027 ) on Saturday July 31, 2004 @02:58AM (#9851120) Homepage Journal
    Laura Anderson said, 'We felt by adjusting the schedule for the products, we could better meet our customers' volume requirements and their high expectations.

    Suit to Geek Translation.

    "We can maximize the profit we make off of our existing inventory by delaying the release of the new chips until we sell off the current stock."

    LK

  • Fix the Colors! (Score:4, Informative)

    by imag0 ( 605684 ) on Saturday July 31, 2004 @03:01AM (#9851131) Homepage
    Mod me up if you hate the color scheme. Here's a fixed link using the "old" slashdot colors:

    http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/07/30/221520 9&tid=118&tid=137&tid=126 [slashdot.org]
    • We should have a preference in our settings for "don't use crazy colours" or "default color scheme" or something like that.

      I prefer Slashdot to look like it always had for as I can remember. True geeks don't need eye-straining colours every other week just to make the interface look "new" - that's for WinXP users.

      • "We should have a preference in our settings for "don't use crazy colours" or "default color scheme" or something like that."

        You do have that preference. It's called light mode or something like that. Sadly, it's hard to spot. Id look for it and help ya find it, but i am tooo fatigued, Sorry if I sound rude or elitist, not intentional.
    • Or you could just switch to the simple mode in your user preferences and roll your eyes when ppl get modded up for complaining about a style that doesn't actually cause eye cancer.
    • The dirty-diaper brown has changed my mind though. Ehrargh! :p

      My god, how hard would some 'set your own colors you whiny bast' code be to pull off?

    • Re:Fix the Colors! (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Dracos ( 107777 )

      The first time I read a story in the IT section, I immediately hated the colors. I don't mind the use of gradients, but the lack of contrast here makes the page almost unreadable.

      Most 14 year olds who get space on Geocities can make a more readable (though almost always uglier) site. Not that /.'s design isn't the cutting edge of 1998, anyway...

    • please, make the hurting stop.

      i tried switching to "light" mode, but then everything looks so boring. and i don't get my slashboxes.

      seriously, how about a "generic slashdot look" option?
      • I disabled all my slashboxes, you'd have thought they'd get the hint that I don't want anything in that side of the page, but once in a while pop an advert, couln't keep them to just the top eh :/
    • Honestly, I don't mind the colors at all. I find them to be easy on the eyes and not at all distracting.
  • Amd's 2Ghz processor is available now! ;)

  • Heat problems? (Score:2, Interesting)

    by ThePeices ( 635180 )
    I wonder if this delay is due to Intel not keeping a lid on the enormous power consumption of the Prescott core at 4GHz? Heat and power is a major issue with these high end chips, and it makes one wonder if Moore's law will finally be halted due to heat issues.

  • Remeber 1-Ghz? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by relyter ( 696205 ) on Saturday July 31, 2004 @03:14AM (#9851176)
    Back in 2000 when Intel was first surpassed by AMD when they were beaten to 1 Ghz, they rushed an overclocked 1.13 Ghz chip to market that eventually ended up being recalled. I suspect that the reason that the 4 Ghz chip is not yet being released may, in fact, have something to do with reliability. Also it is important to remember that this chip is running on the Prescott core, which will probably use over a hundred watts of power alone. Perhaps they need more time to explore better cooling solutions (that can be delivered cheaply) before rushing a potentially unreliable product to market.
    I am in favor of reliable chips (although personally being an AMD zealot myself); I think that the competition between AMD and Intel is important for innovation and fair prices.

  • Sick of brown? (Score:1, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward
    (Be sure to remove the couple of spaces Slashdot added to the code in the background="..." strings.) /*
    Sick of the baby-shit tan color scheme?
    Then enhance your experience by installing this CSS style sheet.

    How to install:
    1. Install Firefox: http://www.mozilla.org/products/firefox/
    2. Install URIid: http://extensionroom.mozdev.org/more-info/uriid
    3 . Copy this text into a file named userContent.css and place it
    in your personal profile *.slt/chrome directory
    4. Restart Firefox

    Goodbye fugly unreadable colors

  • Wow. (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 31, 2004 @03:17AM (#9851178)
    The x86 world's delays in ramping up speed have gotten to be so great that they're almost starting to be as bad as the Mac world's...

    Sparc, x86 and PPC all seem to be kind of floundering at the moment. Does this indicate some kind of problem with the further fulfillment of Moore's law (you know, for once, Moore's law failing to apply NOW as opposed to "Moore's law will stop working in 8 months) or has this just been a bad year?

    P.S. This new "IT" scheme is hideously unattractive by every single concievable method of measurement.

    • Re:Wow. (Score:5, Interesting)

      by NanoGator ( 522640 ) on Saturday July 31, 2004 @03:40AM (#9851231) Homepage Journal
      "Does this indicate some kind of problem with the further fulfillment of Moore's law (you know, for once, Moore's law failing to apply NOW as opposed to "Moore's law will stop working in 8 months) or has this just been a bad year?"

      Option #3 could be that there really isn't a killer app that requires that speed. I have difficulty imagining a lot of ppl flocking to those machines right now. It is a pity for Intel that 3d cards do more for games than cpu's.

    • Errr... Speed is not Moore's 'thang'... (Score:4, Interesting)

      by Chordonblue ( 585047 ) on Saturday July 31, 2004 @10:27AM (#9852456) Journal
      Moore's 'law' doesn't guarantee speed. It merely suggests a trend that every so often (18 months - 2 years) the amount of transistors on a chip doubles. In the past, that has meant speed because thinner wires produce less heat.

      The problem isn't nearly as much to do with CPU scaling for scaling's sake - those processes continue to develop at the same or similar pace. It has much more to do with scaling for speed's sake. To Intel's horror, they've found that speed isn't scaling in a linear fashion like it used to.

      It must have been a terrifying discovery for the poor engineers who discovered that .09 wasn't going to get them anywhere. But imagine the culture at Intel where you daren't say anything to anyone about it, i.e. 'Just SHIP the thing!'

      • Speed IS scaling as expected. It's just that we are now living in a power-limited world.

        There are so many damn transistors now on the chip that switching them all on and off at the same time draws a tremendous amount of power.

        The ability for a system to remove heat from a chip is limited. The costs involved in cooling anything over 150 watts is prohibitive for the volume market.

        So, yes if you had infinite money for cooling solutions then you would see speed scale with process.
      • 'just ship the thing'

        hmmmm

        now what part of '4.0 ghz processor delayed' did you not understand?

        its pretty obvious that they are waiting until they are able to produce working processors in sufficient volume ... so that its not just a paper launch based on a couple working prototypes like AMD has become famous for.
        • stuff that isn't ready! Failed Intel launches are FAR more numerous - especially in the last 5 years. The last serious heat issues with a processor AMD had were with the K5.

          Intel now has an established history of not being able to follow AMD's lead. Up until the K7, that certainly wasn't the case - Intel totally ruled.

          I think what's happening now is an example of big fish/little fish at work. AMD has learned that Intel is too big to manouver well and has been using that to their advantage.

          For instance, I
          • blah blah blah blah

            take us all for fools would you.

            do you really think AMD is a small fish? They've been making processors for 35+ years.

            and quit clouding the issue, AMD has 'launched' many processors that were not actually available for several months.

            The barton line being an excellent example, followed by the mysterious 400mhz fsb bartons that seemed to be but a legend 4 - 6 months after their announcement.

            AMD sitting there? ... not at all, they will be fighting against bankrupcy like they have off a
      • It merely suggests a trend that every so often (18 months - 2 years) the amount of transistors on a chip doubles. In the past, that has meant speed because thinner wires produce less heat.

        Wrong. Thinner wires have lower capacitance (helps) and higher resistance (hurts). Three things cause speedup with smaller geometries: thinner gate oxides (higher transconductance), shorter gates (higher transconductance), closer spacing (lower speed-of-light delay, lower capacitance). There are other effects, but these

    • Moore's law says nothign about clock speed, only transistor counts. Even with the same clock speed there are several ways of boosting chip performace that use extra transistors:
      • more cache - Lets the CPU spend less time sitting around waiting for data & doing nothing. When you consider that most CPUs on the market have cores that run 10-15+ times faster than memory this is a big deal. AMD says that doubling the cache from 512KB to 1MB on a 2.2GHz Athlon64 moves it from a 3200+ to a 3400+.
      • more fu

  • Intel Delays Release of 4Ghz Chips (Score:3, Funny)

    by fr0dicus ( 641320 ) on Saturday July 31, 2004 @03:50AM (#9851254) Journal
    Millions of people wonder how they will cope with IE and Outlook being as slow as they are on their current 3Ghz chips.

  • The megaHURTz myth (Score:5, Interesting)

    by mcrbids ( 148650 ) on Saturday July 31, 2004 @03:55AM (#9851272) Journal
    Intel is now feeling some pain. They've built a brand around having more M/Ghz - which only matter superfically.

    Being a multi-function device means that a CPU does multiple functions. As with ANY multi-function device, a model of CPU will do some things better than others.

    X86 chips have traditionally been processing heavy, I/O weak, since hard, on-demand processing hsa been the driver of the X86 industry. (Video games, etc)

    Contrast that with the Sun Sparc line of chips, or IBM's mainframe hardware, heavily optimized for I/O throughput. The needs of a rendering farm node are not well in alignment with the needs of a high-capacity file server.

    Even within being "processing" demands, there is a wide, wide range. Floating point. Integer ops. Parallel proccessing. Different, even cross-compatible chips and chip lines will behave differently, performing better at some tasks than others.

    But, for years now, Intel has been busy spending millions convincing the population that you can boil performance down to a single number, M/Ghz.

    The cracks are beginning to show. AMD has made a solid business with "slower" (Mhz) ships that perform better. Their own Centrino line is "slower" but performs almost as well!

    Intel needs to get a clue, and develop a set of benchmarks that truly show real-world performance. AMD has done quite a good job with their "+" rating. (EG, my desktop is an Athlon 2000+)

    I give it 6 months, maybe a year. It'll be hard, but even Intel isn't so stupid as to put this off too long.

    • Re:The megaHURTz myth (Score:3, Insightful)

      by _|()|\| ( 159991 )
      Intel needs to get a clue, and develop a set of benchmarks that truly show real-world performance. AMD has done quite a good job with their "+" rating.

      Rating systems are annoying. Imagine if Ford advertised the next Mustang as a 300+, because thinner tires and less weight gave it the performance of a car with 40 more HP.

      Clock speed is the best first-order approximation of a chip's performance. It is true that the Pentium 4 is less efficient, but it's not like we're talking about an order of magnitude. A

      • Clock speed is the best first-order approximation of a chip's performance.

        Why do you say that? There's lots of first-order approximations that have less error... how about price in dollars squared times year of release?
        • how about price in dollars squared times year of release?

          Price is not a very good approximation of performance. A few current examples:

          • the $352 Athlon 64 3500+ is not 61% faster than the $219 Athlon 64 3200+
          • the $829 Athlon 64 FX-53 is not 55% faster than the $535 Athlon 64 3700+
          • the $995 3.4 GHz Pentium 4 EE is not 139% faster than the $416 3.4 GHz Pentium 4

          Each of these pairs runs at the same clock speed, and has a performance difference of about 5% (with, perhaps, a few exceptions for the EE).

          A

    • X86 chips have traditionally been processing heavy, I/O weak

      x86 systems CAN have lots of I/O speed. Witness the Serverworks chips which have multiple 64 bit PCI bus segments (up to 133MHz PCI-X, I think), up to four memory channels and dedicated I/O to RAID controllers and the like. Some of Intel's dual CPU chipsets are pretty beefy too, they were dual channel, dual PCI bus, with dedicated off-PCI lines for network, SCSI, IDE and so on.

      The thing is that desktop machines generally don't need that I/O so
  • I like their PR wording, keep up with volume... it's a nice way of saying (that just like everyone else in the industry) "We've hit a wall at 90nm that we weren't expecting, and it's minimised volume output"

  • Oh SuperIntel (Score:3, Funny)

    by ewe2 ( 47163 ) <ewetooNO@SPAMgmail.com> on Saturday July 31, 2004 @04:56AM (#9851385) Homepage Journal

    Laura Anderson said, 'We felt by adjusting the schedule for the products, we could better meet our customers' volume requirements and their high expectations.'"

    This is the hand
    The hand that takes
    Here come the chips
    They're American chips
    Made in Taiwan
    Smoking or
    Non-smoking

    Grovels to laurie anderson for a lame joke

  • Pentium-M (Score:4, Insightful)

    by dfj225 ( 587560 ) on Saturday July 31, 2004 @08:28AM (#9851957) Homepage Journal
    I have read rumors that soon Intel will switch their main desktop processors over to a design similar to that of Pentium-M, which is currently much more efficient per a clock than Pentium IVs. If this is true, they would definetly have to go back on their "Ghz are so important" campaign. Personally, I rather have effiecient processors than ones that are power hungry and give off lots of heat.

  • So... I can't run emacs until next year? (Score:3, Funny)

    by JT Snortbuckle JrIII ( 796055 ) on Saturday July 31, 2004 @09:39AM (#9852245)
    Dang.


  • Maybe More instead of Moore (Score:5, Insightful)

    by DumbSwede ( 521261 ) <slashdotbin@hotmail.com> on Saturday July 31, 2004 @10:14AM (#9852398) Homepage Journal
    If this is the end of Moore's Law it actually comes at a good time for the chip industry in terms of the GHz range we are at. If things stalled out at 1GHz, everyone would be waiting for 2GHz chips and wondering what the delay was. At 3GHz + it takes only modest gains to get to 4GHz, the industry can then take another year to get to 5GHz, then another year to get to 6GHz. It seems like progress, but is far less than the zoom we had going from 1GHz to 2GHz. IT shops will carp, but to the average consumer at Best Buy it will look like progress.

    If this went on long enough and if we truly are at the end of straight line scaling, the industry might become driven by the one-more-GHz per year rule (the new More Law), versus doubling every 18 months. This new law could then hold for decades as it slowly curves down towards a flat line. I don't actually predict this will be the model soon, as the old Moore's Law is more likely to adhered to, but in 24 and then 36 month time frames for as long as possible. Still, if scaling is dead (and some are saying it is) then we could see the new "More Law" adopted as IT shops and Manufactures try to plan for future purchases. Software providers wouldn't be able to count on Moore's Law bailing them out. Bad news for Longhorn if scaling is dead, it might always be perceived of as slow (if /. reports are to be believed).

    We are already putting 200+ million transistors on CPUs, but most speed increases come from scaling (speed increases) and memory caching. Now is the time for the industry to go Multi-Core. How about 100 two-million-transistor cores on a chip instead, with 500 separate integer and floating cores that can be shared across cores as needed.

    BTW, I do know the real Moore's Law is about the number of transistors on a chip and not speed, but the two have been synonymous in the public's mind since the 80s.


    • "BTW, I do know the real Moore's Law is about the number of transistors on a chip and not speed, but the two have been synonymous in the public's mind since the 80s."

      Actually, now that functionality/performance is more important than MHz alone, perhaps Moore's law will finally regain its TRUE meaning. i.e. more SIMD instructions, multiple cores, better performance at same MHz by using more transistors.
    • That's a pretty silly prediction. What's more likely to happen is that dual, quad, octa-core CPUs will be marketed to the general public. Progress will be made faster at integrating cores together than it will be at making individual cores faster. Plus, a cheaper Barton core could be thrown together into a quad-core chip, letting companies capitalize on mature technology for budget applications.
    • I hate to quibble but Moore's Law [webopedia.com] is cited incorrectly more often than not...

      It actually refers to transistor density, NOT cpu Hz or any such metric of system speed.

      And amazingly, it's still held true give or take a bit. But it's quite possible (in fact, likely) that CPU speed will top out even as Moore's Law continues to hold.

  • bull (Score:3, Insightful)

    by KB1GHC ( 800065 ) on Saturday July 31, 2004 @12:22PM (#9853043)
    i can't believe this!

    I guess intel is just trying to make more money. They are trying to sell the slower chips at high prices, the 4 Ghz chips are probably gonna come out with todays price of 3.6 Ghz chips.

    oh well, i just got a 3.0GHz P4, i'm not going to be buying a new computer any time soon, if anything i'm gonna be a low end laptop.

    AMD already sells 3800 64bit processors!

    Intel hasn't even developped a method to allow 32 bit apps to run on a 64 bit processor.

    Intel is screwed, and it's screwing it's self!

    I've been seeing a larger and larger number of AMD users. and i've only bought intel chips all my life, AMD looks tempting, i think next computer i might buy an AMD, unless Intel changes it's act.

    plus i see more multiprocessor mobo's available for AMD than intel, i think intel only has them for their zeon processors.

    AMD chips are:
    faster
    32 AND 64 bit
    cheaper

    AMD looks tempting to someone who has used intel chips their entire life.

    however, i have friends who have had some real bad issues with AMD, thats why i didn't get one for my last computer.

    hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm

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