Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD)

[HailMary]

My expectation was that the pipeline would be extended by only 2 stages, and with other enhancement, the resulting IPC would be 5 to 10% higher for Prescott than NW.

That was my expectation as well. Now with a much longer pipe they have the potential for much better frequency scaling (after fixing whatever the problem is). If I knew ahead of time that Prescott was going to be 31 integer stages, I would have guessed a more significant loss in IPC (5-10%), and much higher frequencies (4 Ghz). So Prescott as is would have beaten my IPC guess, and missed dismally on my frequency guess.