AMD quietly introduces locally-strained silicon process

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Archived from groups: comp.arch,comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.chips (More info?)

> >> The real question that no one at Intel seems to be
> >> able to answer is how they managed to more than double the number of
> >> transistors (vs. Northwood) and not have anything to show for it.
> >>
> >
> >Nothing to show for it is perhaps an overstatement, unless I am
> >misreading SpecFP results:
>
> True, it is a bit of an overstatement, but CFP2000 seems to be the
> exception rather than the norm. Many other tests have shown little to
> no improvement, with a number actually being slower on the Prescott
> rather than the Northwood. If all results reflected what we see in
> SPEC CPU2000 I don't think people would say much, but as it stands
> it's left more than a few people (myself included) wonder just what
> the heck all those extra transistors really bought them.

Okay most the extra transitors brought them better performance in
DOOM3.
Unfortunately for the rest of the transistors I don't know and those
extra transistors take more area than the already mentioned
transistors.
http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?i=2149&p=4

Jouni Osmala
Helsinki University of Technology

 

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Archived from groups: comp.arch,comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.chips (More info?)

On 29 Aug 2004 10:15:38 -0700, josmala@cc.hut.fi (Jouni Osmala) wrote:
>> True, it is a bit of an overstatement, but CFP2000 seems to be the
>> exception rather than the norm. Many other tests have shown little to
>> no improvement, with a number actually being slower on the Prescott
>> rather than the Northwood. If all results reflected what we see in
>> SPEC CPU2000 I don't think people would say much, but as it stands
>> it's left more than a few people (myself included) wonder just what
>> the heck all those extra transistors really bought them.
>
>Okay most the extra transitors brought them better performance in
>DOOM3.
>Unfortunately for the rest of the transistors I don't know and those
>extra transistors take more area than the already mentioned
>transistors.
>http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?i=2149&p=4

On the other hand it's slower than the Extreme Edition, and if Intel
had done a straight shrink of the P4EE down to a 90nm fab process they
probably would have ended up with more or less the same die size as
the P4 "Prescott".

Certainly there are situations where the Prescott does beat the
Northwood, but as mentioned above, there are also many tests that show
no improvement and even a fair number that show the Prescott being
slower. With a more than 100% increase in transistor count one would
normally expect a MUCH more convincing sign of improvement.

-------------
Tony Hill
hilla <underscore> 20 <at> yahoo <dot> ca