Pentium 4

As the leading desktop processor on the market
today, a full understanding of the P4 and its
various present incarnations is essential. The
product started out in November of 2000 at 1.4
GHz (a 1.3 GHz part soon followed) with several
features aimed at the high-end market. The
integrated Hyper Pipelined Technology sported a
20-stage pipeline instead of the Pentium III’s
10-stage, which allowed for higher speed scaling
potential. Over 140 new instructions were added
(SSE2) to enhance execution of multimedia

applications. You might recall that Intel made a big deal about how much SSE2 would help improve the performance of Internet media. As time has shown, a more accurate claim might have been that the P4 helps improve the creation of Internet content. Other Pentium 4 improvements include enhanced branch prediction, 20K of L1 cache, 256K of full-speed L2 cache (later bumped to 512K), enhanced floating point performance, and arithmetic logic units that run at double the core CPU frequency.

The original Pentium 4 arrived with a 100/400 MHz bus speed (recall that Pentium 4 architecture is “quad-pumped,” meaning that data is passed four times per clock cycle), but, more importantly, it also arrived accompanied by the 850 chipset. The 850 northbridge utilized Rambus’s RDRAM memory, which was superior to the conventional SDRAM modules of the time. The problem was RDRAM’s prohibitively higher price tag. When AMD, VIA, and others arrived with double data rate (DDR) DIMMs with increasingly similar performance at far lower prices, Intel finally had to exit its tight Rambus alliance and bring the Pentium 4 platform over to DDR compatibility with the 845 chipset.
The Pentium 4 has taken on new innovations, as well, as it has progressed through several generations. The jump to a 533 MHz FSB (not to mention 0.13-micron fabrication process instead of 0.18-micron) with the 2.4 GHz chip noted the introduction of the second generation P4, informally known as the Pentium 4B. Likewise, the Pentium 4C hopped to an 800 MHz FSB at the 3.0 GHz mark. The Socket 423 PGA platform finally petered out at 2.0 GHz and ceded to the current Socket 478. This was also the speed at which the Pentium 4’s 256K of L2 cache was universally changed over to 512K, a move that entailed adding 13 million additional transistors to the chip. Correspondingly, the Pentium 4’s massive transistor count and higher power requirements spawned both the necessity for a separate 12V ATX power line to the motherboard as well as a new heatsink retention mechanism to accommodate the P4’s hulking heatsink fan units.

After the rise in FSB speeds, Hyper-Threading (HT) may be the single most important innovation in the Pentium 4 line, although the technology originally appeared in the Xeon line in March of 2002. In systems where HT is enabled in the chipset, operating system, and applications, Intel states that the system’s performance can increase by up to 25% just on HT’s contributions alone.
A “thread” is essentially a data pipeline across which instructions are fetched and executed. In the original Pentium 4, as with all preceding Intel desktop chips, the processors were single-threaded. In multi-processor environments, the operating system dynamically utilizes the thread potential in each processor. With an HT processor, resources within the chip are divided up to create two (or potentially more in the future) “virtual” processors. Each virtual processor is not as effective as a dedicated physical processor, but when the virtual processors operate in tandem, the overall performance is superior. Hyper-Threading is most effective when applications are coded to utilize HT capabilities, but even non-HT applications working under an HT-enabled operating system can benefit. All Pentium 4C and later chips have HT integrated into them.
We should point out that there may be times when you need to watch the fine print in your processor selection. The “C” generation is based on the Northwood core while the “E” generation is based on the new Prescott core. Prescott marks the move from a 0.13-micron fab process down to 0.09-micron. This feature shrink has enabled Intel to increase the L2 cache from 512K to 1MB and add support for another 13 SIMD instructions collectively known as SSE3. The oddball exception in Intel’s current lineup is the “2.80A GHz” processor. With 1MB of cache and a 0.09-micron process, the 2.80A looks like a standard Prescott chip save for the fact that it sports only a 533 MHz FSB and lacks Hyper-Threading. There is a separate 2.80E chip that is a true Prescott part.

Extreme Edition

One of Intel’s latest advances to the P4 line is the
advent of the Extreme Edition (EE), and this is
another place where you need to watch the specs.
As of this writing, the only two EE chips come in
3.20 GHz and 3.40 GHz varieties, but there are
also 3.20 GHz and 3.40 GHz standard Prescott
parts, so be cautious. Extreme Edition Pentium 4s
first arrived last November and are based not on
the Northwood core as you would expect but the
Gallatin core from the Xeon MP. While they feature

The Channel View on Chips

We won’t try to snow you. The desktop processor space is a tough market that has faced wave after wave of commoditization over the last 20 years. The price point for an average mainstream system has fallen drastically from its $1,500 level during the mid-‘90s, but the recent desktop PC market has stayed nearly flat since the pre-Y2K sales surge, denying an increase in shipment volume to compensate for the profit decline in falling ASPs.
“The growth opportunities in desktops can be fairly limited,” says Dean McCarron, president of Mercury Research. “The desktop market has been under a lot of pressure as the portable market is building. Within desktops, outside the 64-bit class, there isn’t much change or growth. Now, there are some niche areas, especially in the small form factor and quiet PC areas, that are growing, but they use the same chips as standard desktops. The difference is that product selection may be done more carefully to optimize for thermal issues and things like that.”
The news seems even more grim when you consider that industry projections show notebook sales surpassing desktops in 2007. This begs the obvious question: Where will you find opportunities in the desktop processor field?
Not everyone thinks the desktop processor market is grim. While Louis Burns, vice president and general manager of Intel’s Desktop Platform Group, wouldn’t give us specific numbers, he did tell us that the desktop outlook for 2004 was “very, very good” and “far from flat.” Allan Schroeder, director, marketing and product management for MA LABS Inc., feels that the replacement cycle for all those Y2K machines is primed for coming around at last. While most PCs get turned over on an average of every three years, Schroeder contends that the replacement cycle has been disrupted because of the poor economy combined with an influx of surplus used systems left over from the dot-com fallout. However, even these surplus machines from 2001 and 2002 are now growing long in the tooth, and the tech economy is at last showing some indicators of turning around.
Most sources we speak with agree that the low end of the desktop market is an increasingly lost cause for small system builders. The momentum for resellers and the channel as a whole is shifting into the high end.
“Everything is moving upscale,” says Schroeder. “For a while, it was the war of the Celeron against the Duron, but now Intel and AMD are both focused on high-end products.”

The reasoning is clear: The feature sets found in the latest desktop processors—64-bit extensions and NX based-security for AMD or the Hyper-Threading, SSE3, and large cache sizes in Prescott-based Pentium 4 chips, for example—lend themselves to complete solutions. Companies that want to run 64-bit servers and terminals today have an increasing number of options in the Linux world with distributions from the likes of Mandrake, Red Hat, and SuSE, and a growing number of high-end consumers are taking an interest in 64-bit Linux, as well. (For a better sense of this space, check out an article from last December at OSNews: http://www.osnews.com/story.php?news_id=5428). Of course, the gamer market is doing nothing but growing, and the latest chips from both vendors make bold appeals to this group.

“There’s a lot of buzz around 64-bit,” says Mercury Research’s Dean McCarron, “but volumes will be limited for the next six months. The feature set does command a good price premium, though, and the public interest level is high.”
Availability is a problem that has sporadically plagued both Intel and AMD over the years, and AMD has taken its turn most recently with the Athlon 64 line. However, Geno Marcoux, general manager and vice president of the Ingram Micro components business unit in the U.S., says that he sees processor supply in the channel becoming much more stable than in years past.
“The CPU business has been good,” says Marcoux. “Manufacturers have really taken a look at trying to get more linear and managed, trying to control their production cycles better. There are still peaks and valleys, but I think you’ll see the delta between over- and under-supplies smoothing out.”
Over-supply, of course, is part of what continually feeds the microprocessor gray market. Companies from throughout the PC industry are working to suppress gray market opportunities. Not only does gray market supply erode Intel’s profit and drop ASPs throughout the channel, it thwarts the business development opportunities provided through vendor channel programs and opens the door to counterfeit/remarked parts being sold to end-users, a phenomenon that still happens periodically.

“The reason the gray market exists is because of arbitrage,” says Marcoux, “either through pricing in different regions or different programs that allow that arbitrage to create a delta and allow people whose business models are based on taking advantage of that arbitrage to exist. Ultimately, the vendor is the one who has to step up and put some effort into cleaning it up. I think Intel did that, and then AMD quietly followed suit.”
Of course, not everyone feels the gray market is the scourge of the processor industry. MA LABS is one of the largest IPDs around, yet the company continues to do a huge business in gray market chip sales. In fact, rather than seeing his company as facilitating an industry problem, Allan Schroeder perceives that MA LABS is doing the channel a needed service.

“The manufacturers are the ones who control the gray market,” says Schroeder. “They’re the ones who have relationships with OEMs who either need the quantities of products they buy or buy those quantities and then get rid of some of them somewhere. We’re trying to help our resellers compete with Dell. Our resellers offer local service and local availability, but Dell has huge economies of scale and purchasing power with their OEM relationships. We view ourselves as a service organization for system builders and VARs. It’s our job to find them the lowest possible price. We actually make the same amount of money whether we’re selling an authorized product or gray market. If we can find the same product, we’ll let resellers make the choice.”

Ultimately, the real money to be made in desktop processors lies in creating a complete package with software and peripherals that relies on the CPU’s most cutting edge advantages. You can see this most clearly in the media center PC movement, which may prove to be the biggest and most profitable desktop opportunity of 2004. Not only are Hyper-Threading and multimedia extensions a huge boost here, but the 64-bit element will be a tremendous help as 64-bit Windows and third-party PVR applications evolve.
When we spoke with Intel’s Louis Burns, he was passionate about home entertainment and convergence being at the center of tomorrow’s mainstream PCs. His only fear was whether Intel will be able to provide enough performance for next-generation usage models.

“Say I’m encoding two HD shows off a satellite and putting those on the PVR,” says Burns. “I’m also streaming one HD stream and I’m streaming a HD movie, but it’s not going to be able to be played in HD, so it’s transrating and transcoding that. In another part of the house it’s playing my music, and someone’s still doing the books or doing their checkbook. You’re gonna need a serious amount of processing for all that. But people are also going to want high-definition audio and high-definition video. If you look at the penetration already of HDTVs or HD-capable TVs, there’s been like a hockey stick move on that because people aspire to that level of entertainment, and they see that the content’s starting to show up in that space.”
So while you may not see a large trend upward in desktop processor sales, there is still plenty of opportunity to make the space more profitable, both on the front side of the sale and the back side with the vendor’s channel programs. If you can turn the latest technology innovations into meaningful solutions rather than faceless commodities, you’ll find there’s far more of a goldmine in processors than just their wiring.