Intel's new CPU architecture

[bascule]

Intel is set to announce their new CPU architecture today

While some expect this to be a Pentium M derivative, a lot of the hype Intel has been putting out makes this sound as if it's a newly revamped CPU architecture which will function completely different from the Pentium 4. The Inquirer (famous for wild, aloof speculation) suggested it might be a highly parallel chip consisting of several simple VLIW cores ala Cell, and use dynamic on-chip translation to convert x86 to a proprietary VLIW instruction set.

What's it gonna be then, eh?

[dYn4mic]

As seen on slashdot:
http://www.anandtech.com/tradeshows/showdoc.aspx?i=2503
http://it.slashdot.org/it/05/08/23/1...id=218&tid=137

"The new architecture will be shared by 'Conroe' desktop, 'Merom' mobile, and 'Woodcrest' server processors, all of which were demoed by Intel CEO Paul Otellini. Rather than chasing clock speeds, Intel is focusing on lowering power consumption with its new architecture. Otellini claimed that Conroe will offer five times the performance per watt of the company's current desktop chips. He also ran the entire keynote presentation on a Merom laptop, and demoed Conroe on a system running Linux."

Not AS exciting as it could've been... but 5 times the performace per watt is a huge difference.

More info:
http://techreport.com/onearticle.x/8695

[TheCotMan]

http://www.anandtech.com/tradeshows/showdoc.aspx?i=2503
http://it.slashdot.org/it/05/08/23/1...id=218&tid=137

"Rather than chasing clock speeds, Intel is focusing on lowering power consumption with its new architecture."

Remember when we had the discussion about Apple switching to offer support for Intel, and it was suggested Apple had some inside knowledge?

All I can say is Steve Jobs must know something about what's in the pipe for Intel come 2006/2007....

Maybe this was it.

[bascule]

No real technical details yet, but it doesn't look like anything too spectacular.

[TheCotMan]

No real technical details yet, but it doesn't look like anything too spectacular.

Power consumption is a big deal. If the x86 architecture vendors move to low power chips, then they can advertise longer battery life and prepare for other jumps in speed.

In many organizations, lack of support of a specific feature in a laptop line is sufficient to switch both desktop and laptops to another vendor- site-wide.

Lower power, can mean less heat which can mean better performance in CPU that support speed throttling (speed stepping) based on CPU heat from available power to run fans to keep the CPU cool.

Even if we assume this does not change battery life, having a laptop NOT decrease speed when on a battery provides a relative performance advantage over the laptop that runs slower on a battery.