What the heck do the Dothan and Prescott have in common
other than their process? These are vary different designs
in many ways.
I have to side with you here chipguy. A lot of people here are assuming a 90nm transistor is a 90nm transistor, but that is far from the truth. While it may be that Intel has more leakage in general on 90nm than they anticipated, the design and usage of the transistors themselves have a lot to do with leakage characteristics of a chip. Prescott may be using bleeding edge leaky design because it had to for frequency results, and Dothan may be well within the safe zone where leakage is kept in check. Dynamic power will be vastly different too. Dothan seems a lot more efficient. Less transistors, lower voltage, lower frequency, similar benchmark results. Sounds like a good chip.
Another point is Intel's 90nm process is going to be improved over time to be less leaky while improving transistor speed. It could be it started out highly leaky, but things may be much more under control now. This is assuming the problem is a general 90nm process problem which may not even be the case.
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