“With energy efficiency creeping up enterprises’ evaluation criteria list, Intel knew it couldn’t afford to allow its future chips to use more power. The Santa Clara, Calif., company went back to the drawing board to create a new chip architecture—a replacement for the circuitry that underpins its entire x86 product line—that would both increase performance and cut power consumption,” John G. Spooner writes for eWeek. “Intel will roll out three dual-core chips based on the new Intel Core Microarchitecture later this year… One major change along these lines was the addition of the ability to execute four instructions in a single clock cycle.”
“Intel also chose to use a 14-stage pipeline, and designers cut onboard cache access times and beefed up the ways in which data is prefetched from system memory to ensure that processor cores aren’t kept waiting… The 14-stage pipeline is slightly longer than the ‘Banias’ architecture behind the company’s Core Duo notebook chip, which has 12 stages. But it’s still about half the length of later Pentium 4 processors, which process only between one and three instructions per clock cycle,” Spooner reports. “The new architecture will allow chips such as Intel’s dual-core ‘Woodcrest’ server processor, due in the third quarter, to offer a 35 percent reduction in power consumption with an 80 percent bump in performance over the current Xeon DP processor.”
Full article here.
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Related articles:
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Intel to launch 64-bit Core Duo successor ‘Merom’ in September – March 07, 2006
Intel reveals first glimpse of quad-core ‘Clovertown’ chip coming later this year – February 11, 2006
Wow. Sounds like good news for upcoming Power Macs (let’s just call them Macs or Macintoshs for old times sake) and xServes.
It’s eWeek, masters of disinformation.
eWeek, meet MacDude. MacDude you need to head on over to the eWeek website AND STAY THERE!
While it’s nice that Apple seems to be trying to play catchup, ultimately none of this will matter. The Next Step in Trusted Computing, Microsoft Windows Vista, along with .NET, will provide an all-encompassing solution for personal and business applications.
©
Sputnik! Welcome back in the fold!
Sputnik, you’re literally the last Microsoft fan left on earth (or the last one drinking the kool-aid), which is difficult considering you’re in orbit.
And when is this “all-encompassing solution for personal and business applications” coming? 2007? 2008? Or have you been taken in with Microcraps new advertising thing, People Software.
Sputnik, go crawl back to where you came from.
Sputnik! Almost missed having you around.
But really, your material; if it’s straight or shtick, it’s last year’s model. Even the Big M$ knows that VISTA & .NET are “beleaguered”.
Time to refresh it. You can do it!
Fewer pipeline stages is great news. If I remember correctly, the G4 had 7 stages. I don’t know how many the G5 has but I’d imagine it’s around there somewhere. That should please people who were worried about leaving the efficient PowerPC chip to go to a less efficient x86 chip. As I’ve said before, these are not your father’s x86 chips. If Intel was still traveling down the 22+ stage Pentium road, I doubt Apple would have switched.
i think it’s funny when people reading these posts actually think sputnik and macdude are serious. some of you need to lighten up a bit! =)
By the time I am ready to replace my powerbook with a new Macbook pro they will have some really sweet battery results and be so fast, but until then I am sticking with my powerbook. Gotta finish my payments on the damn thing.
Sputnik and I enjoy playing the devils advocate occassionally.
Some of your responses and mimicks are just hillaious.
And yes some people actually take what we say seriously, like what I or Sputnik says will actually change the course of the buying public with all those Apple Stores?
To those I say:
Apple is already dead, just a few more nails in the coffin and they will be done.
Hail Vista, whenever it arrives.
I’m going to tell you something about what Intel is up too.
You see, the physical limitations of size and processor speed has been reached, they can’t get them much any smaller or faster, that’s why they are adding cores to processors instead.
Now they are trying to optimize the power consumption and other things to squeeze out a little more performance. But it’s really trying to find a few more drops out a already squeezed lemon.
What’s needed is a whole new concept with processors and IBM had the answer with the Cell processor.
However Apple and Steve jobs couldn’t take such a leap because Apple is trying to gain market share and you just can’t jump off on such a wild new processor design and expect to turn a profit.
So Steve Jobs chose Intel, for good or bad, because both PC’s and Mac’s will be in the same boat and Apple can compete on software as the hardware requirements are the same.
Since Apple is a consumer company, it doesn’t pay to go off on a wild new processor design because only buisnesses will invest it it, not consumers who need compatability with the zillions of x86 software developers.
The Cell processor could have been a really wild thing, we would have computers immensly powerful, but most users don’t even have a need for 64 bit.
Web, email, Office, some games, some music.
That’s mostly all consumers want or need.
I got a Dual 2 Ghz G5 and it’s 10x more power than I need most of the time.
Since buisnesses won’t buy Apple computers, it doesn’t make any sense to make a really powerful Cell based Mac for them anyway.
IBM would just muscle in anyway.
So for some really cool 3D animation workstations based upon the Cell processor, I guess we will be looking at some other comapny.
Apple should invade this space with their software knowledge can make a tidy profit in this small niche.
MacDude:
I wrote the “sputnik” comment before. Good work on taking the bait.
You have accessed iTroll! Have a nice day!
A-HAHAHAHAHAAAAAAA!!!
®
…but he never calls me…
Macdude:
It is obvious to me now. Yours and Sputnik’s talents, insights, and intellects are needed elsewhere, where enterprise and academia, politics and cultures converge and fuse into a munificent energy source of transcendental proportions. Here great good for all of humanity could be accomplished. In fact, I believe that if each of you consummates an alliance this union will usher in a new and blissful millennium. No natural force on this planet can prevent Macdude (Exponential Man) and his trusty sidekick, Sputnik (Wonder Boy)!
MacDude:
You really need to drop this “thing” you have for IBM.
The Cell is a vast improvement over the G5 as it relates to speed and heat (slightly) but it’s actually rigged.
They made the cell tailored for a specfic purpose it not a true processor.
I know you love desktops as opposed to a laptop but the trend is definitely heading towards the later.
With that in mind the Cell or earlier G5 isn’t the solution but the problem. Heat is the problem.
Look at the reports for xBox. Sure it’s using the Cell and it’s not as big as a PowerMac BUT it’s still overheating.
What do you think would happen in a Laptop.
Ultimately the Cell still wouldn’t work for laptops. And that’s the reason for the switch to Intel.
My two cents.
Cheers!
The cell was not going to be developed for desktop or laptop computing any time soon. The cell’s forte is imbedded computing. It’s ideal for things like game boxes. It was a dead end for Macs.
Hello, the
matrix3, the XBox 360 doesn’t use the Cell processor. The PS3 will use the Cell. The XBox 360’s cpu is call Xenon, not to be confused by Xeon, which is Intel’s server chip. Xenon is manufactured by IBM, and is based on PowerPC. It has 3 cores, but is a very specialized processor for gaming, that wouldn’t necessarily be a good processor for general PC use.
Most of what you wrote is still valid otherwise.