UND, Re: What makes you think that the mobile design could outperform the hammer line? Could you point to some benchmarks showing this? I know you like your Centrino, but do you really think it stands a chance in application benchmarks against an AMD64 2700+ or 3000+ mobile processor?
THG shows some benchmarks where a 1.6GHz Banias processor core comes close or outperforms a 2.0GHz Athlon 64.
That's one datapoint (not a very good one), but it's moot anyway. My thesis involved a theoretical Dothan derived desktop part with iMC, Hyperthreading, 800MT/s FSB, and higher frequencies that would be going against a fully desktop Athlon 64 or 64-FX. I don't think the Athlon 64 line would stand a chance - either in pure performance or lower power.
"What makes you think that the mobile design could outperform the hammer line?"
Banias has a pretty high IPC, according to Anandtech it's higher than the PIII. Despite having a 20 - 50% longer pipeline, Banias still maintains a significantly higher IPC than the Pentium III, which is not an insignificant achievement. http://www.anandtech.com/mobile/showdoc.html?i=1800&p=4
Now the PIII and the K7 had roughly the same IPC. The Hammers can achieve about 10% to 15% more than the K7 due to increased bandwidth to the L2 and the embedded memory controller. So it's not impossible that some hypothetical desktop version of Banias/Dothan would have similar, if not better, performance as the Hammers. Possibly at lower power.
AFAIK, no one has matched a Pentium-M and an Opteron or A64. It would be interesting...
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