Comdex 2002 - Day 2: Intel's CPU Roadmap & Hammer Performance

We're well into Day 2 of Comdex here in Las Vegas and we had to take time out from our very busy schedule to report on some interesting findings about future Intel and AMD CPUs.

Intel's Prescott intro at > 3.2GHz

Looking at Intel's CPU roadmap, it's interesting to note that Intel will not be scaling clock speeds next year as rapidly as they did in 2002. This makes a lot of sense considering how hot the new 3.06GHz Pentium 4 is running. Intel's current roadmap shows them not breaking the 3.06GHz barrier until the second quarter with the 3.2GHz Pentium 4. The last two quarters of 2003 are currently listed as > 3.20GHz and > 3.40GHz, mostly because Intel isn't exactly sure how high they can push their 0.13-micron Northwood cores.

The relatively slow (compared to this year) clock speed ramp next year gives AMD a chance to regain some of their lost performance ground. The slow clockspeed ramp also puts pressure on Intel to introduce their 90nm Prescott core as soon as possible, however currently it is scheduled for a Q4 2003 release.

According to Intel's latest roadmap (current as of last Friday), Prescott will debut at least at 3.20GHz and will be made available with a 1MB L2 cache.

In order to make up for a lack of clock speed improvements, Intel will be introducing the 800MHz FSB (200MHz quad-pumped) on the 0.13-micron Northwood Pentium 4 processors before Prescott's release. The release will happen in Q2 2003 and instead of offering higher speed CPUs, Intel will go back and offer 800MHz FSB versions of CPUs as slow as 2.4GHz. These new 800MHz CPUs will also have Hyper-Threading support, which should make them very attractive purchases. Prescott will obviously support the 800MHz FSB as well.