Intel will increase the clock speed of its Pentium 4
processor for possibly the last time as the company heads into a
new era for its desktop processor designs.
The Pentium 4 570 processor is a 3.8GHz chip with 1Mbytes of
Level 2 cache that will feature the fastest clock speed of any
Pentium 4 processor for an indefinite period of time. It will lead
Intel's mainstream desktop segment when it is released on 15
November, an Intel spokesman confirmed.
Intel's shift away from clock-speed frequency as a central
design philosophy has been well documented this year.
In May, the company cancelled plans for two high-frequency
single-core processors in favour of an acceleration of dual-core
designs due by the end of 2005. More recently, plans to release a
4GHz Pentium 4 were cancelled last month after Intel decided the
effort required to reach that milestone would not be worth the
expense.
Increasing the Pentium 4's clock speed has been a mantra at
Intel almost since the chip was released in 2000. But starting in
the first quarter of 2005, Intel will improve the performance of
the Pentium 4 processor by adding cache memory.
Several processors running at 3.8GHz and slower will receive the
extra memory, which improves performance by permitting the chip to
store larger amounts of frequently accessed data close to the
processor.
After that, dual-core chips are expected in the second half of
2005 that will run slower than existing Pentium 4 processors.
Chips running at 4GHz or faster might eventually surface for
low-cost PCs, said Nathan Brookwood, principal analyst with Insight
64.
Intel currently builds low-end chips like the Celeron processor
by disabling half of the Pentium 4's cache memory. But disabling an
entire processing core on a dual-core chip would probably be
considered a waste of silicon, Brookwood said.
The company could keep a single-core processor design for
low-end PCs could be manufactured in smaller sizes than dual-core
desktop chips and help reduce Intel's manufacturing costs for that
product line, Brookwood said.
The improvements in power consumption that are expected along
with the arrival of the 65 nanometer process generation around the
end of 2005 will also help make a 4GHz clock speed a reality for
budget chips based on a single-core design, he said.
Intel is expected to release two versions of a dual-core desktop
processor based on the current Pentium 4's Netburst architecture in
late 2005 or early 2006.
But starting in 2006, Intel is expected to begin a shift toward
using the Pentium M in desktop PCs. The Pentium M delivers
comparable performance to the Pentium 4 on most applications while
running much slower, and therefore using much less power.
This will be true even when the dual-core Pentium M, codenamed
Yonah, launches in 2005. Even if Intel made no changes to the
current Pentium M design to improve power consumption on Yonah,
which is unlikely, a dual-core Pentium M running at around 2GHz
would consume about 40 watts of power. This is far less than the
115 watts consumed by the fastest versions of the Pentium 4.
Tom Krazit writes for IDG News Service