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Intel Corp. recently confirmed that its Intel Pentium D processor is actually two Intel Pentium 4 cores on the same package. The firm claimed that it had to quickly create a dual-core processor in order to stay competitive, which conditioned the design of the product Intel has chosen.

“We’re putting two cores in one package; it’s like trying to fit into the pair of pants you saved from college,” said Jonathan Douglas, a principal engineer in Intel’s Digital Enterprise Group, which makes chips for office desktops and servers, reports PCWorld.

Intel first announced intention to deliver dual-core processors for various markets in May, 2004. It is now revealed that the company began to work on the project around the same time, which gave the firm a very short time to complete the development and launch the product in mass production. That said, Intel had to use existing technologies and not develop a new processor system bus, integrate memory controller into the central processing unit or perform any other enhancements.

Intel first demonstrated its dual-core processor up and running in September, 2004, at its semi-annual Intel Developer Forum. After that an analyst expressed doubts whether a “real” dual-core microprocessor was demonstrated, or two existing Pentium 4 chips were placed on the same piece of substrate. Intel opposed the analyst, but now it had confirmed the assumption: the Intel Pentium D is basically two Intel Pentium 4 processors. Still, dual-core processor means there are two processing engines plugged into a socket, which is exactly what Intel supplies.

“We faced many challenges from taking a design team focused on making the highest-performing processors possible to one focused on multi-core designs,” Mr. Douglas added during Hot Chips conference.

Intel has over 17 dual-core and multi-core projects in development.

Discussion

Comments currently: 5
Discussion started: 08/20/05 12:49:12 PM
Latest comment: 08/22/05 03:04:11 AM
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[1-4]

1. 
So funny to see them admit what most of the world knew way before they released the chips. lol
[Posted by: Anemone  | Date: 08/20/05 12:49:12 PM]

2. 
I don't think they had much choice.

But when a engineer admit the product he help make was shit, then you gotta think they have something far better up their sleeve for the next one...Something that they might announce on Tuesday. :)

BTW, they have solved their leakage issues with the 45nm process. (65nm process reduced it significantly, but its still present as the final P4 based CPUs will be using this process...45nm is for something new).

Now I would like to see how IBM/AMD are gonna handle a situation when Intel has solved its thermal related issues (dumping P4 crap and shifting to a new manufacturing process)...So it boils down to more speed (more likely more cores) and features that 90% of the world won't use until 5yrs later.

Stilll...I wouldn't touch a Pentium-D with a 10ft pole, given the choice. (They aren't suitable for the apps I use...Mostly engineering ones that require good FPU).
[Posted by: 32  | Date: 08/20/05 01:47:19 PM]

3. 
I'd have to agree.

When you're pressured to do something, it never comes out as good as it should be.

Intel took 9 months to build the Pentium-D, this is way too short from what they usually do, which is usually 3 to 5 yrs.

I suspect the Pentium-D has some serious bottlenecking going on there.

Heck, AMD's K8 began as a dual-core on the drawing board. So they had more than adequate time to properly develop their solution. Only wish they release the X2 3800+ at the price of the Pentium-D 820...I would defintely get it.


I'm not sure how much of an effect in admitting your product is crap, has towards sales, I guess not much as I hear dual-core CPUs on the desktop market aren't selling all that well. (You can tell buy the price drops happening alot more quickly than anticipated).

Its different for the server/workstation markets, because the majority of those apps being used are multithreaded and actually benefit from an 2nd or more core or CPU.
[Posted by: fht3  | Date: 08/20/05 02:00:21 PM]
+ expand thread (1 answer)

4. 
Makes you wonder why they did not just pop a couple of Tualatins on a chip, instead of Pentium 4s. Tualatins are still better than anything AMD or Intel have for that, since they run so much cooler they would not have to be throttled back artificially like the Athlon 64 and Pentium 4.

Also, Intel never planned on going dual core for a good reason, it is a lousy design either way; being just a poor man's dual processor system. Instead, they designed the Itanium which focused more on instruction level parallelism instead of thread level parallelism. Obviously, the former is better since it works for every application ever written, whereas for applications where multithreading is poorly suited, multi-core systems run poorly since they are done so badly they run at lower clock speeds. Since the Itanium is a market failure, at least in the mainstream arena, Intel is forced to wring out more performance from the miserable x86 instruction set and naturally were caught flat footed since they never wanted to go this way.

I am amazed at how well AMD and Intel have made people believe dual cores are a good thing. It is an egregious lie; it really means they have no clue how to develop processors from here on. AMD gave up much earlier, and at least realized they had no clue. Intel thought they did and jacked up the transistor count for the Prescott with all these new wonderful features, and fell on their faces because of power problems. So now they figured out what to do, add something very few people need, and those that do need them would do better with a real multiprocessor system.

I wonder how much money is wasted on too powerful PCs, in terms of electricity every year. When you factor in how many people do mainly surfing the internet, or playing MPEGs or similarly simple things like this, and are using 75 watt processors to do this. Multiply it by the millions and millions that have these machines, and it has to be a huge amount of money that is wasted every year. Now these bozos crank it up even more with dual processors when virtually no one even needed the highest speed single processor. And, of course, if they did need a dual processor, or more, configuration, they should get a real one instead of some half-rate dual core system with a shared memory bus and lower clock speeds.

Still, this is a good thing somehow. Good grief.

[Posted by: ta152h  | Date: 08/22/05 03:04:11 AM]

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