Intel had originally planned to release the first Pentium 4 processors with clock speeds of 4 GHz by the end of this year. Then, Intel pushed the release until early 2005. Now, there are no plans to release a 4 GHz processor. Instead, Intel plans to improve Pentium 4 performance by means not related to processor clock speed. There are several factors which can affect processor performance. For instance, the cache size of the current 3.8 GHz Pentium 4 will be doubled from 1 MB to 2 MB as Intel currently has in their Xeon server chips. The cache is a pool of memory that is incredibly fast and resides right inside the chip. The larger the cache, the faster the chip can actually process information internally. Another way to improve performance is to increase the bus speed. Bus speed is different from processor speed in that bus speed measures how fast the Pentium 4 can exchange information with the rest of the computer system. Processor speed measures how fast the logic and mathematical computations occur inside the chip. One of the other reasons Intel doesn’t want to further increase processor speed is that as clock speeds increase so does the heat generated. If Intel can use other means to improve processor “performance” without raising clock speeds further, everyone will benefit - it just might be a little harder to compare the numbers from chip to chip. |
