Hot! IDF Spring 2003, the second day: actual releases

It’s time for the second keynote. Prescott has been officially mentioned for the first time and they’ve even showed a wafer. Louis Burns, General Manager, Desktop Platforms Group:

Prescott key specs in brief:

• 90nm process technology
• 1Mb cache
• Higher-performance architecture
• Improved HyperThreading
• 3GHz initially
• Designed for 4-5GHz
• 7-layer design and low-k dielectric
• Doubled (16Kb) L1 cache
• 800MHz QPB bus
• 13 new instructions:
  • FP to Integer conversion (FISTTP)
  • Complex algebra (!) — ADDSUBPD, ADDSUBPS, MOVDDUP, MOVSHDDUP, MOVSLDUP
  • Video encoding (!) — LDDQU
  • SIMD FP using AOS format — HADDPD, HSUBPD, HADDPS, HSUBPS
  • Thread sync (!) — MONITOR, MWAIT
• Increased data and instruction prefetch
• Increased speed of integer multiplication, additional post-write buffers
• Improved power management
• LaGrande hardware bus data protection.

Prescott chips will feature strained silicon technology for achieving higher clock speeds and lower heat emission.

The improved HyperThreading enables to set priorities (for example, main thread handles 50% resources, other three share the remaining 50%; compiler sets their priorities when necessary).

There won’t be any new executive units in the processor. The company decided to spend transistors to new features like improved prefetch and HyperThreading.

By 2010 Intel plans to reach 15-20GHz clock speeds and widely use multi-thread and multi-core processors.

Besides, first Manitoba (PX800) samples were showed off, having performed very well in Java OS. The first call was made from a smartphone on this chip.

It’s interesting that 4Mb of on-chip memory and 512Kb SRAM enable Manitoba to perform times faster performance comparing to previous. It’s the result of tight memory-chip integration and wide interhannel as well as small latencies: Manitoba needs thrice less time (!) for a memory request than XScale PXA250 requesting to 50MHz SRAM.

The company also mentioned some new chipsets and platforms (high-performance Canterwood and mainstream Springdale) to be launched in volumes in 2003 and early 2004:

Intel also had time to present Azalia sound solution expected in 2004 and planned for gaming and business:

• DVD Audio and SACD (!) playback
• 3D gaming sound
• Conferencing technologies including automatically configured mic set for better voice capture.

For the first time Intel presented such a functional sound solution.

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