What’s going on at Intel? This week alone there were so many negative messages about Intel is not as usual in a year.
First, Intel CEO Craig Barrett complained two days ago the technical achievement of his company. Then the man obviously knew what would emerge later this week for reports: Dell can not sell high-end PCs, because the Pentium 4 with 3.6 GHz is available. The producer talks about a 45-day delivery time. Then it was announced that the Nocona chipset for Intel’s Xeon processors some errors. The idea is to take place next Monday still useable.
And now Intel spokesman confirmed the expected shift for the high end of the year with a 4 GHz Pentium 4 on the next year. Supposedly, Intel will make sure that the CPU at presentation, a correspondingly large quantity in the market today. This is likely to be only half the story for the delay. As shown by some overclocking attempts to cope with the Intel chips significantly higher clock speeds than specified. Thus, the production of a 4-GHz chip for Intel to be a problem. The reason for the shift may lie more in the enormous appetite for energy of the processors. Even a 3.6-GHz Pentium 4 requires up to 115 watts of power. If one assumes the instantaneous production process, then higher clocked P4 processors consumer switched on even more power.
For the upscale energy demands, among other things, Intel has pushed even the new BTX chassis design in the market. A more efficient heat dissipation is the main advantage of the new platform. However, BTX is now widespread. Most computer cases are available in the ATX standard. To promote these, the waste heat from the case, it requires a sophisticated cooling system. This is both expensive and secondly by making extra fan to PC also loud. Especially business customers react very sensitively.
There are strong indications that Intel has recognized this problem long ago and has appropriate measures to reduce energy starvation initiated its P4 processors. The production of a Pentium 4 takes about six to eight weeks. After this time, so we can only determine whether the measures have borne fruit for energy reduction.
Intel processor that its designation of the frequency as 3.6 GHz with model numbers now provides (Pentium 4 560) also indicates a reversal. Intel is suddenly on the long-standing marketing club (true GHz) is waived, is remarkable. It could be that the world’s largest semiconductor manufacturers in the next few years presents a CPU architecture for desktop PCs, which can significantly less frequency, but the power of a Pentium 4 with 4 GHz überfügeln. Many experts expect that the Pentium M is out of the Centrino architecture based on the new Intel chips.
Until then, Intel CEO Craig Barrett will report no matter how many times to speak.
