The Pentium 4 is different from all other Pentiums in more than the style of the numbering system, Arabic as opposed to Roman. The Pentium 4 is the first totally different processor than any before it since the Pentium Pro of 1996. Intel has totally redesigned the inner core of the Pentium 4 as opposed to P6 core of the Pentium Pro, Pentium III, and Pentium !!!. The P6 was a very successful core, spanning over 4 years, and 800MHz. But the times, they are a changin’
Hyper-Piplined Technology
The older P6 x86 core from Intel used a 10 stage fully pipelined process to keep the CPU chugging on all cylinders when it\’s needed. This process would take the individual instructions of a program, break them up, and let the CPU execute them when ready, if they are out of order or not. This is of course one other main reasons the chips of today are so powerful as opposed to the 80×86 generations, because short instructions in the end of the program didn\’t have to wait for the complex ones at the beginning.
That isn\’t the whole story when it comes to the FPU. Along the way to executing an instruction, there are 10 stops, or 10 areas in which the instruction \”rests\” or \”stops.\” For the sake of argument, let\’s say that, an instruction will only stop at each stage for one clock cycle, then move on. For one instruction to get though all the stops in a 1GHz Pentium iii, it would take 1*10-8 seconds. Not bad when a human can move that fast, and it\’s not that bad for a computer either. If the pipeline of the chip was always full, there would still be one instruction coming out of the chip per pipeline per clock cycle, which very nice.
Along comes the Pentium 4, equipped with an instruction pipeline that is twice as long as it\’s predecessor, the Pentium iii, 20 stages to be exact. For a 1.5GHz P4, which is what Intel plans on releasing it at, the pipeline will take (assuming one instruction per stage per clock cycle.) the P4 will still pump out 1 instruction per pipeline per clock cycle, but each individual instruction will take 1.333*10-8 seconds to get out of the pipeline. That\’s 0.333*10-8 seconds longer than it\’s predecessor, which isn\’t good.
But, because the P4 will still pump out one instruction per clock cycle, which is still good. It will just take longer to do individual instructions. In processor heavy benchmarks, such as 3D games, the Pentium 4 at 1.4GHz is actually shown to be lesser than or equal to the speed of the Pentium !!!. Please be aware that the Pentium 4 tested was a pre-release sample, and meant only to improve the final product by finding faults before they go on sale, just like Beta Software.
Before I go any further chastising the Pentium 4 for being mentally slow, I must say there are a few advantages to having a longer member…err…pipeline. A longer pipeline gives the chip the ability to be ramped up to higher clock speeds. This helps to offset the obvious disadvantage of a longer pipeline at the same clock speed.
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