Intel Prescott to Dissipate More than 100W of Heat

by Anton Shilov
07/25/2003 | 03:54 PM

A Japanese web-site revealed some information about heat-dissipation of Intel Prescott processors due to come this November at $637 price-point. The chip will be extremely hot and hungry and in general this is a reason why it will not be compatible with the vast majority of i865 and i875P-based mainboards that were meant to be compliant with the Prescott.

Despite of the fact that the code-named Prescott will be made using 90nm fabrication process using Intel Strained Silicon technology, the babe will be very hot and will eat loads of electricity. According to this report, the Prescott 3.60GHz processor’s Thermal Design Power will be about 103W, 15% more from initial expectations of 89W. A version of Prescott processor for DTR notebooks will typically dissipate about 94W heat.

In order to meet such requirements Intel also had to increase the current for such CPUs, and that is an explanation why the most of current mainboards will not be able to work with Intel Prescott processors. For instance, the original Prescott 3.60GHz was intended to work with 78A IcccMax, whereas the real version will only be able to function with current increased to 91A.

The TDP of the Tejas processor manufactured using 90nm technology for Socket T platforms will be well above 100W; keeping in mind that Tejas is expected to achieve 4.0GHz milestone, we can conclude that massive cooling-solutions will be required for cooling-down such monsters.