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wbmw

05/01/04 11:08 AM

#33447 RE: j3pflynn #33446

Paul, Re: Considering where Banias is on 130nm, though, I'd be astonished if Dothan got anywhere near NW or Prescott clocks.

Of course it won't. Banias and Dothan were micro-architected to have a pipeline less than half the size of Prescott, so they won't be clocking anywhere near it.

I responded to sgolds because he claimed that "the process" was hitting a wall at 3GHz. That's preposterous. Prescott itself hit a wall, and it could be because of multiple reasons. With a 31 stage pipeline, there may not be robust enough cooling solutions that exist to put the processor at the voltage and power dissipation that would allow it to clock at its full potential. Maybe Intel thought there would be, but that's not important. Prescott will need the regular speed path fixes and process fine-tuning to hit the 4GHz mark that Intel has set for the end of the year.

Dothan, on the other hand, won't get near 4GHz, but there's no reason to assume that it will be process limited, just because the common myth is that Prescott is process limited. This also applies to the FUD that gets tossed around here about Dothan being higher power than Banias just because Prescott is higher power than Northwood. Unless Intel implemented a 50% longer pipeline in Dothan (which I give about a 0% chance at this point), then Dothan will be lower power and higher frequency than its predecessor. (The insider news says 21W for 400MT/s FSB parts and 27w @ 533MT/s FSB parts).
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chipguy

05/01/04 11:53 AM

#33451 RE: j3pflynn #33446

At this point there's no reason to believe much of anything about Dothan. Not enough data. Considering where Banias is on 130nm, though, I'd be astonished if Dothan got anywhere near NW or Prescott clocks.

So would I. Up to 2.5 GHz over time is almost a
certainty. Going much above 2.5 GHz is pretty iffy.