Darin Martin wrote:
> You are correct... The P-II/P-III/Celeron/Xeon are all based on the Pentium
> Pro. There have been changes like MMX and Katmai as well as the process
> shrinking from .35 micron for the P-Pro to .25 for the P-II/P-II/Celeron and
> then .18 micron for the new Coppermine P-III processors.
> There have also been cache changes.. The P-Pro had cache on the die that ran
> at the speed of the CPU and came in 256k, 512k, and 1 meg varieties.
> The P-II and early P-III had 512k of 1/2 speed cache on the slot card. The
> first celerons had no L2 cache at all.. The second gen Celerons have 128k of
> full speed cache on the chip die. The Coppermine chips have 256k of full
> speed cache on the chip also..
> I believe some of the instruction pipelining for the FPU has been improved
> over the last 5 years as well..
> However, the main instruction set for the CPU remains unchanged since the
> P-Pro came out in late 1995.
>
> Intel's 7th generation processor is supposed to be released 4th quarter
> 2000. It has been code named Merced for the last 4 years or so.. The actual
> product name "Itanium" was recently announced. It will be a true 64 bit
> processor and completely incompatible with all x86 code, unless someone
> decides to create an emulator for it.
I recently had a chance to try out a dual Itanium workstation at a users group
conference in early October. I must say it (the workstation) was pretty
impressive although the presentation given by the Intel VP was in the same lame
style as an infomercial, very VERY tacky.
--
Joseph S. Gardner
Senior Designer / Technical Support
Kirby Co., Cleveland, OH
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
