pctechguide.com

  • Home
  • Guides
  • Tutorials
  • Articles
  • Reviews
  • Glossary
  • Contact

Pentium Prescott

In February 2004 Intel formally announced four new processors, built on the company’s industry-leading, high-volume 90 nanometre manufacturing technology. Formerly codenamed Prescott, the new processors were clocked at between 2.8 and 3.4GHz and differentiated from the previous Northwood series by an E designation. The expectation is for chips based on the Prescott core to have reached clock speeds of 4GHz by the end of 2004.

Initially, Prescott CPUs will use the same Socket 478 interface as earlier Pentium versions, run on the 800 MHz FSB, support Hyper-Threading and are compatible with a number of current Intel chipsets, such as the i875P and i865 family. The new core is expected to subsequently move to the LGA775 interface (also referred to as Socket T). This uses a land grid array of 775 pinouts and is a much cheaper form of packaging than either PGA or BGA.

The Prescott’s major differences from its predecessor are its significantly deeper stage pipeline, increased cache sizes and an enhanced SSE instruction set. Compared with its predecessor, the Prescott’s pipeline has an additional 11 stages. The effect of a 31-stage pipeline will be to afford far greater headroom for faster clock speeds in the future. The size of both the L1 and L2 caches have been doubled to 16KB 8-way set associative and 1MB respectively, and the new core has 13 more SSE instructions – now referred to as SSE3 – than the Northwood.

Built exclusively on 300 mm wafers, Intel’s 90nm process technology combines high performance, low-power transistors, strained silicon, high-speed copper interconnects and a new low-k dielectric material. The new processors represent the first time all of these technologies have been integrated into a single manufacturing process. The Prescott core is also Intel’s first to have 7 metal layers, the additional layer being necessitated by the big increase in the new CPU’s transistor count, 125 million compared to the Northwood’s 55 million. Despite this, at 112mm2 the new 90nm Prescott core is more than 20% smaller than its predecessor.

Prescott

Shortly after the launch of its initial line-up of Prescott-based CPUs, Intel also signalled that its future LGA775-based Prescotts (as well as its next-generation 32-bit Xeon processors) will include 64-bit x86 extensions that are compatible with AMD’s 64-bit architecture. While this tacit endorsement of its 64-bit technology initiatives can be seen as a victory for AMD – and a potential indictment against Intel’s own 64-bit Itanium 2 processors – it might also spell trouble for Intel’s rival in the longer term, by forcing AMD’s 64-bit processor line to compete on price, rather than technology.

Shortly after its decision to switch from clock speed to CPU processor numbers to denote relative performance and market positioning, Intel announced the first desktop processors to use the new 5xx model nomenclature in the summer of 2004. The new chips all used the company’s new PCI Express capable chipsets and LGA775 CPU interface and were equipped with 1MB of Level 2 cache. Clock speeds ranged from 2.8GHz for the model 510 to 3.6GHz for the model 560.

The final revision of the Pentium 4 was Cedar Mill, released in early 2006. This was simply a straight shrink of the 600-series core to 65nm, with no real feature additions. The table below shows the various incarnations of the Pentium 4 up until this final version of the mainstream desktop processor:

Date Codename Transistors Die

Size

L2

Cache

Fabrication Speed

(GHz)

2000 Willamette 42,000,000 217mm2 256KB 0.18µm 1.4 to 2.0
2002 Northwood 55,000,000 146mm2 512KB 0.13µm 2.0 to 3.4
2004 Prescott 125,000,000 112mm2 1MB 0.09µm to 3.6
2006 Cedar Mill 188,000,000 81mm2 2MB 65nm to 3.6

The Prescott’s major differences from its predecessor are its significantly deeper stage pipeline, increased cache sizes and an enhanced SSE instruction set. Compared with its predecessor, the Prescott’s pipeline has an additional 11 stages. The effect of a 31-stage pipeline will be to afford far greater headroom for faster clock speeds in the future. The size of both the L1 and L2 caches have been doubled to 16KB 8-way set associative and 1MB respectively, and the new core has 13 more SSE instructions – now referred to as SSE3 – than the Northwood.

Built exclusively on 300 mm wafers, Intel’s 90nm process technology combines high performance, low-power transistors, strained silicon, high-speed copper interconnects and a new low-k dielectric material. The new processors represent the first time all of these technologies have been integrated into a single manufacturing process. The Prescott core is also Intel’s first to have 7 metal layers, the additional layer being necessitated by the big increase in the new CPU’s transistor count, 125 million compared to the Northwood’s 55 million. Despite this, at 112mm2 the new 90nm Prescott core is more than 20% smaller than its predecessor.

Prescott

Shortly after the launch of its initial line-up of Prescott-based CPUs, Intel also signalled that its future LGA775-based Prescotts (as well as its next-generation 32-bit Xeon processors) will include 64-bit x86 extensions that are compatible with AMD’s 64-bit architecture. While this tacit endorsement of its 64-bit technology initiatives can be seen as a victory for AMD – and a potential indictment against Intel’s own 64-bit Itanium 2 processors – it might also spell trouble for Intel’s rival in the longer term, by forcing AMD’s 64-bit processor line to compete on price, rather than technology.

Shortly after its decision to switch from clock speed to CPU processor numbers to denote relative performance and market positioning, Intel announced the first desktop processors to use the new 5xx model nomenclature in the summer of 2004. The new chips all used the company’s new PCI Express capable chipsets and LGA775 CPU interface and were equipped with 1MB of Level 2 cache. Clock speeds ranged from 2.8GHz for the model 510 to 3.6GHz for the model 560.

The final revision of the Pentium 4 was Cedar Mill, released in early 2006. This was simply a straight shrink of the 600-series core to 65nm, with no real feature additions. The table below shows the various incarnations of the Pentium 4 up until this final version of the mainstream desktop processor:

Date Codename Transistors Die

Size

L2

Cache

Fabrication Speed

(GHz)

2000 Willamette 42,000,000 217mm2 256KB 0.18µm 1.4 to 2.0
2002 Northwood 55,000,000 146mm2 512KB 0.13µm 2.0 to 3.4
2004 Prescott 125,000,000 112mm2 1MB 0.09µm to 3.6
2006 Cedar Mill 188,000,000 81mm2 2MB 65nm to 3.6
  • Pentium Architecture
  • Pentium Pro
  • Pentium MMX Technology
  • Pentium II
  • Pentium SEC
  • Pentium “Deschutes
  • Pentium Xeon
  • Pentium III
  • Pentium Tualatin
  • Pentium 4
  • Pentium Northwood
  • Hyper-Threading Technology
  • Pentium Prescott
  • Pentium Processor Numbers
  • Multi-Core Processors
  • Pentium Smithfield
  • Pentium D
  • Pentium Roadmap

Filed Under: Pentium CPUs

Latest Articles

Glite

During 1997 a number of companies were independently working on versions of splitterless DSL. The theory behind splitterless DSL is that it requires no technician to come to your house to install it, making the technology easier to install … [Read More...]

Color Scanners

Colour scanners have three light sources, one for each of red, green and blue primary. Some scanning heads contain a single fluorescent tube with three filtered CCDs, while others have three coloured tubes and a single CCD. The former … [Read More...]

Memory Storage

Many first-generation digital cameras contained one or two megabytes of internal memory suitable for storing around 30 standard-quality images at a size of 640x480 pixels. Unfortunately, once the memory had been filled no more pictures … [Read More...]

Why Cross-Chain Trading Is the Future of Crypto Investing?

The rapid growth and evolution of the cryptocurrency market have opened up exciting opportunities for investors. Within this dynamic landscape, … [Read More...]

Revolutionize Your Internet Experience with Orbi 960 – The Ultimate WiFi System

In a world where seamless connectivity is essential, slow and unreliable internet connections are a major problem. Whether you are running a business, … [Read More...]

Do You Need a VPN When Trading Cryptocurrency?

There’s no doubt that the biggest global industries in 2023 are tech-driven, while there remains a significant crossover between many of these … [Read More...]

Goodbye Bitcoin: the 3 alternative cryptocurrencies that have great upside potential, according to experts

Bitcoin has been a very lucrative investment for people that got into it early. One report from The Motley Fool pointed out that $10 of bitcoin … [Read More...]

Self-driving cars face their Achilles’ heel and may be targets of hackers

The market for self-driving cars is booming. Customers spent $22.22 billion on these autonomous vehicles in 2021 and they will likely spend more in … [Read More...]

How to avoid scams with bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies

Cryptocurrencies got a bad reputation when scams multiplied like ants on a piece of cake. Even today many people associate bitcoin and other … [Read More...]

Guides

  • Computer Communications
  • Mobile Computing
  • PC Components
  • PC Data Storage
  • PC Input-Output
  • PC Multimedia
  • Processors (CPUs)

Recent Posts

SDRAM

The more recent Synchronous DRAM memory works quite differently from other memory types. It exploits the fact that most PC … [Read More...]

Advantage to Shared Web Hosting

When it comes to web hosting services, there are many options available that range from small to enormous and everything in between. If you're new … [Read More...]

How To Export Office 365 To PST

Emailing has become an indispensable part of our lives. Often, many of us use it even more on our mobile phones, for professional and personal use. … [Read More...]

[footer_backtotop]

Copyright © 2023 About | Privacy | Contact Information | Wrtie For Us | Disclaimer | Copyright License | Authors