Replies to post #3249 on Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD)

[wbmw]

Kpf, Re: However, I doubt Banias could scale much further, just for the reason it is a modified P3-Core (i.e. an architecture from the last century). Originally designed for 180nm, already shrinked once and blown in a third life for Banias. Now gets its fourth life for Dothan. From every experience we have, you just cannot do this endlessly.

The micro-architecture is actually based on Pentium Pro, which was first launched in 1995. The Pentium III is a modified Pentium Pro on 250nm-130nm with SSE instructions and on-die cache. There were a few performance tweaks along the way, but nothing drastic.

Banias, on the other hand, includes innovative features such as micro-ops fusion, a much improved three tier branch predictor, a dedicated stack manager, SSE-2, larger on-die caches, a faster front side bus, and lower power design improvements.

I would say that while Banias still shares the basic micro-architecture of the Pentium Pro, which is now going on 8 years old, it is still a much larger jump from Pentium III than Pentium III was from Pentium Pro. Keeping in mind that it took 6 iterations of the design to go from Pentium Pro to the most recent Pentium III, it's fairly impressive how much more was added in just a single iteration after that.

[Elmer Phud]

Kpf -

However, I doubt Banias could scale much further, just for the reason it is a modified P3-Core (i.e. an architecture from the last century). Originally designed for 180nm, already shrinked once and blown in a third life for Banias. Now gets its fourth life for Dothan. From every experience we have, you just cannot do this endlessly.

You should apply that reasoning to Opteron, a warmed over Athlon.