The Speed of Intel Centrino CPU: 1.7GHz vs. 2.53GHz Desktop Processor

[Saint]

Why a 1.7GHz Centrino can be faster than 2.53GHz desktop processor ? I read this in a news. [?]

 

[Greg Bernhardt]

The same reasons Athlon 2000xp (1.67ghz) matches a Pentium 2.0ghz. The amount of HZ doesn't tell the whole story behind how powerful and fast a processor is. What those factors are I'm not entirely sure

 

[J-Man]

Some of those factors are: bus speed/size, number of registers, instruction set, op-code cycle times, logic-gate structure, transistor size, amount of cache memory, software controling the cpu (i.e. BIOS), among other things.

 

[J-Man]

BTW, isn't the centrino only for laptops/portables?

 

[russ_watters]

J-man, yeah. Laptops only. And you missed the primary factor in the efficiency difference between most chips: pipeline length. The reason the p4 is slower per clock cycle than the p3 is they doubled the length of the pipeline. It takes 20 clock cycles to process an individual instruction. There may be 20 different instructions in the pipeline, but when an operation depends on the results of another, the later operation has to wait before it can be run.

The reason the pipeline was lengthened is there is a relationship between how high a processor will clock and how long the pipeline is. Its a tradeoff (not sure why though).

The centrino has a shorter pipeline than the p4 (not sure how much though).

 

[Saint]

how about the design of AMD Athlon ?
What is better than intel P4 ?

 

[J-Man]

Originally posted by russ_watters
J-man, yeah. Laptops only. And you missed the primary factor in the efficiency difference between most chips: pipeline length. The reason the p4 is slower per clock cycle than the p3 is they doubled the length of the pipeline. It takes 20 clock cycles to process an individual instruction. There may be 20 different instructions in the pipeline, but when an operation depends on the results of another, the later operation has to wait before it can be run.

I thought I included that in with bus size; I meant both number of conduits and physical dimensions, but I suppose I could have elaborated. Chalk it up to laziness on my part.

The reason the pipeline was lengthened is there is a relationship between how high a processor will clock and how long the pipeline is. Its a tradeoff (not sure why though).

I could be wrong, but I believe it mainly has to do with the delay times.

 

[J-Man]

Originally posted by Saint
What is better than intel P4 ?

It depends on what you mean by better, or what is better for your situation. The answer would vary depending on what is important for you be it price, size, power consumption, ips, ease of integration, instruction set, availability, etc.

 

[Greg Bernhardt]

The Intel Xeon could be thought of as "better" because it allows duel-processor configuration.

 

[MacTech]

Originally posted by Greg Bernhardt
The Intel Xeon could be thought of as "better" because it allows duel-processor configuration.

Xeons are nothing.. forget them...

Itaniums kick anythings butt, even PPC 970 :(

 

[Saint]

Why intel wants to delay the project of 64bits CPU for desktop?
The news said that intel will follow suit if AMD is successful.