Intel Prescott Launch Date Unveiled

by Anton Shilov
09/22/2003 | 04:52 PM

Some of our sources close to the world’s largest semiconductor company tell us about problems with the 90nm fabrication technology Intel has been suffering from for months now. They even suggest that the actual Prescott processors in commercial quantities will be available only early next year, not this year as previously reported.

Despite of those claims, Intel is rumoured to keep its word and formally announce the new Prescott processor on the 3^rd of December, 2003, The Inquirer said today.

Intel’s code-named Prescott processor is based on the same NetBurst architecture as all convenient Pentium 4 CPUs. However, the Prescott will have a lot of innovations, including enlarged L1 and L2 caches, more advanced pre-fetch mechanisms, more efficient Hyper-Threading technology and 13 Prescott New Instructions. The chips will consist of roughly 150 million of transistors and will be made using 90nm Strained Silicon fabrication process. You may check this news-story for more information on Intel Prescott.

Intel delayed the release of Prescott from this Spring to this Fall due to an unknown reason. In Summer it transpired that actual processors fabricated using 90nm process consume and dissipate significantly more energy than Intel had expected initially. Even though the firm has been working to find a solution for this issue, it looks like the initial 3.20 and 3.40GHz Prescott chips will have this drawback.

In case the report is correct and Intel does not have intentions to change its unannounced plans, we will see a lot of reviews of Intel Prescott processors, while some OEMs will start to sell systems based on the new chips. However, I am not sure about massive retail availability of Intel Prescott processor this year, considering the claims of some of our sources. Frankly speaking, the chips will hardly be in outstanding demand due to their prices: $637 and $417 for 3.40 and 3.20GHz respectively.