X-bit labs

Intel Discontinues 64-bit Pentium 4 for Workstations, Servers.

Category: CPU

by Anton Shilov

[ 04/30/2005 | 08:51 PM ]

Intel Corp. announced plans to cease supplies of Intel Pentium 4 processors for servers and workstations that support 64-bit capability. The chips already have substitute on the market – Intel Pentium 4 series 600 – and no are no longer needed by Intel’s customers.

Intel said the Intel Pentium 4 processors that support Intel EM64T for servers and workstations, particularly models 3.20F, 3.40F, 3.60F and 3.80F will be cut from the lineup of the company’s products. The last date to place orders on the microprocessors is the 26^th of August, 2005, the last date of the product shipments is the 25^th of November, 2005.

Intel Pentium 4 processors with EM64T are available in numerous speed-bins, including 3.20GHz, 3.40GHz, 3.60GHz and 3.80GHz. The chips that contain 1MB of L2 cache and are designed for 800MHz processor system bus come in LGA775 form-factor and are compatible with mainboards based on i915- and i925-series chipsets. Intel Pentium 4 processors with EM64T capability have never been widely available, even though they could be bought in retail.

Currently Intel ships its 64-bit Pentium 4 processors 600-series with up to 3.60GHz clock-speed that contain 2MB of L2 cache, support EM64T, HT, EIST, EDB technologies, and are also compatible with 800MHz PSB LGA775 infrastructure, such as mainboards based on i915- and i925-series chipsets.

Intel said in 2004 it would ship Pentium 4 “Prescott” processors with 64-bit capability for 1P applications only to system integrators requesting such microprocessors for their servers and workstations. Although all Prescott CPUs, including Intel Pentium 4 and Celeron, are 64-bit from micro-architectural standpoint, processors supplying for retail channels as well as for typical desktops were said to have their 64-bit capability disabled. Now that Intel’s desktop Pentium processors support EM64T across the board, there is no need to supply a separate lineup of chips.

Unveiled in early 2004, Extended Memory 64 Technology also known under 64-bit Extension Technology or IA32e let Intel’s server and client processors to execute specially-written 64-bit code and address more than 4GB of memory while maintaining absolute compatibility with today’s 32-bit applications.