Intel says "Good Riddance, Gigahertz"

[Katsuya]

Wired.com reports "Good Riddance, Gigahertz" as "Intel said last week that it plans to stop using gigahertz figures to market its microprocessors...". Depending on the design, some types of chips can now process more instructions in each cycle, making them "faster" than other chips with higher clock speeds. In reality, clock speed is just one factor in a computer's performance, alongside other arcane figures like the number of transistors, data width, cache size and bus speeds." What should be the method for numbering CPUs if any? Should their be a speed based or performance based naming scheme adopted by all CPU manufacturers and if so what?

Originally Posted by Katsuya

Wired.com reports "Good Riddance, Gigahertz" as "Intel said last week that it plans to stop using gigahertz figures to market its microprocessors...". Depending on the design, some types of chips can now process more instructions in each cycle, making them "faster" than other chips with higher clock speeds. In reality, clock speed is just one factor in a computer's performance, alongside other arcane figures like the number of transistors, data width, cache size and bus speeds." What should be the method for numbering CPUs if any? Should their be a speed based or performance based naming scheme adopted by all CPU manufacturers and if so what?

Intel knew they were driving themselves into a wall with "Clock Speed means everything" This comes as no surprise. Tho Its really going to change the way people percieve gaming and minimum system requirements soon. 2 and half years from now I figure.

[Strider]

so, what, they wanna use bigger numbers or somethin? Instead of intel pentium 4 3.6 ghtz it will be 3600 mhtz now? :P or maybe 3,600,000 kilohertz? dont tell me theyre going for 3,600,000,000 hertz!

[fivefeet8]

Originally Posted by Strider

so, what, they wanna use bigger numbers or somethin? Instead of intel pentium 4 3.6 ghtz it will be 3600 mhtz now? :P or maybe 3,600,000 kilohertz? dont tell me theyre going for 3,600,000,000 hertz!

No. They are going to start developing a CPU that is similar to AMD's line of Athlon processors. Lower clocks, but higher IPC and performance. It looks like it will make the AMD model rating useless if Intel creates lower clocked Higher IPC CPU's.

I've also heard that Intel is using the Centrino modile cores and modify or market them for the desktop. Centrino mobile processors for notebooks have a lower clock, but higher IPC design.

[ka0s]

posted in AMD vs Intel
guess no one saw

[Demigod]

Originally Posted by fivefeet8

No. They are going to start developing a CPU that is similar to AMD's line of Athlon processors. Lower clocks, but higher IPC and performance. It looks like it will make the AMD model rating useless if Intel creates lower clocked Higher IPC CPU's.

I've also heard that Intel is using the Centrino modile cores and modify or market them for the desktop. Centrino mobile processors for notebooks have a lower clock, but higher IPC design.

Hmm, I see no plans in Intel's roadmap for a new desktop processor core based on something other than NetBurst. As far as I know Tejas and future NetBurst cores are still on the map. Even if Intel was to abandon NetBurst and develop a new core it would take several years for it to materialize. I mean, this isn't GPU design where you can rig up a GPU core in a year.

As for Centrinos they're no match for the Pentium 4. They have higher IPC per clock but don't have the clock speed to match its NetBurst-based brother. Plus a lot of its technology was designed specifically for mobile computing. Adapting it to the desktop will require almost a complete design overhaul, unless you want to use such features on the desktop (highly unlikely). You really have to ask if it's worth it.

[Craig Venom]

well, all i can say now that intel is inferior to amd coz amd can make a microprocessor that low on clock speed but much higher perfomance like the athlon64 fx beat the hell out of the P4C 3.2Ghz. All i can say amd microprocessor rocks...(need money to buy it though)...

[Solid_Snake]

That might be going to happen to intel Presscott ,maybe??

[Demigod]

Originally Posted by Craig Venom

well, all i can say now that intel is inferior to amd coz amd can make a microprocessor that low on clock speed but much higher perfomance like the athlon64 fx beat the hell out of the P4C 3.2Ghz. All i can say amd microprocessor rocks...(need money to buy it though)...

And yet AMD processors cannot climb clock speeds nearly as well as Intel ones. High IPC means nothing without good clock speeds, and vise versa. AMD chose one way and Intel chose another. It's like working 9 hours a day for 200 days, or 6 hours a day for 300 days. I mean sure there are obvious disadvantages to having a long pipeline, like frequent stalls and mispredict penalties, but it also allows features like hyper-threading and more scalability.

[Craig Venom]

Yeah but i love the 3dnow and hyper transport...

[Demigod]

Originally Posted by Craig Venom

Yeah but i love the 3dnow and hyper transport...

3DNow! is a decent instruction set, but it isn't used much. SSE and SSE2 have much greater support in the industry (they also perform better from what I've seen). The latter are also supported across all x86 CPUs so there doesn't leave much room for AMD's instructions. As for hyper-transport it doesn't do much on the Athlon's FSB. It's a nice technology but it'll probably be eclipsed by PCI Express, which is rapidly gaining acceptance.

[shnord]

Intel dosent want to create a new core, they just want to number the CPUs by their "speed" rating. They want to do this because of the centrinos and pentium 4 EE edition- even though they have a certain clock speed they opreate faster then that, kinda like the Athlons.

[ka0s]

You can't really operate faster than a clock speed. And, they are making a new core.

[Demigod]

Originally Posted by ka0s

You can't really operate faster than a clock speed. And, they are making a new core.

He means doing more work per clock. And what proof do you have to this claim that they're making a new core?