From: "Greg Sevart" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Reply-To: The Hardware List <[email protected]>
To: "The Hardware List" <[email protected]>
Subject: Re: [H] New Intel 775 Pin Motherboards
Date: Mon, 19 Sep 2005 11:18:41 -0500
The slot design was useful for only one thing--getting the cache closer
to the CPU core so a faster bus could be use. Once cache was integrated
into the die, the need for slots were out.
Tidbit: The Pentium Pro actually had an integrated L2 cache (well, the cpu
and cache were in the same package) and used socket 8. It was released
some two years before any Slot-1 Pentium II was shipped.
True. However, the size of the die was too large to make it economical for
anything but server usage. (die size = $$$) Plus, the Pentium Pro's cache,
as you state, was not integrated into the core so much as it was slapped
into the die package. Therefore, it couldn't achieve the same benefits of a
huge bus width and low latency that true integrated cache (first on the
Celeron A of all things...) brought.
It was actually pretty close. The PPro clock for clock blew away the PII -
the Celeron A and PIII with integrated cache was of course a bit faster, but
not revolutionary. Those chips simple carried on where the PPro left off.
The P2 was in many respects a step backwards, especially for servers back
then. We talk about how the PPro was insanely expensive to manufacture and
ironically the move to integrated cache with newer gen chips was not only
for performance reasons, but for cost savings as well.
