The beginning of next year should become a very interesting season for those of you who carefully follow all Intel’s new processor announcements. Besides the introduction of the new 0.13micron Northwood core for Pentium 4 processors, we expect one more innovation in the server market to come up. Starting from the beginning of next year Intel will offer CPUs supporting Hyperthreading technology formerly known as Jackson.
We would like to remind you that the main idea of Hyperthreading technology implies the possibility to process multiple calculation threads by one CPU without shifting between them from time to time. In other words, a CPU supporting Hyperthreading will be like an SMP system built with a few CPUs. It means that the applications capable of creating several independent calculation threads will work faster on a CPU with Hyperthreading than on a system with one regular processor.
Intel is planning to implement Hyperthreading technology in all its server solutions in the beginning of 2002. Xeon MP will be the first CPU to start using this technology in multi-processor servers. This processor is to be announced in January. Besides Hyperthreading, Xeon MP will feature a 512KB or 1MB L3 cache, will work at 1.6GHz and will have a 0.18micron core.
In March the Hyperthreading supporting family will get a Xeon CPU for dual-processor systems to join them. It will be built on a new 0.13micron Prestonia core and will work at 2.2GHz.
However, Intel connects much greater plans with its new Hyperthreading technology. According to them, this technology can help increase the performance of the regular desktop systems as well. They claim that a system built on a Pentium 4 processor supporting Hyperthreading technology could work 25%-30% faster than a similar system without it. Therefore, Intel considers Hyperthreading as one of the possible ways of increasing the performance of its Pentium 4.
As to the available info, Hyperthreading will be introduced in the desktop Pentium 4 family in the beginning of 2003, together with the shift to a new 0.09micron Prescott core from Northwood. Moreover, a bit later this technology will also migrate to the mobile Pentium 4 processors.
But the most interesting thing is the fact that Hyperthreading technology is already implemented in the today’s Pentium 4 processors built on Willamette core from the very first day. About 5%-10% of the die size is occupied by transistors building up this technology. However, in the meanwhile Hyperthreading technology in Pentium 4 CPUs is disabled and Intel doesn’t hurry to activate it, but is patiently waiting for a suitable moment to do it. Moreover, the company is now trying to figure out some other possible ways of increasing the processor performance such as making a bigger L2 cache.