Real World Technologies - In-Depth Technical Analyses And Help For Professionals

In the last six months several noteworthy events and disclosures have occurred in the fast moving world of microprocessors. AMD started shipping its Palomino K7 processor as the Athlon XP. Despite the controversy surrounding the performance rating based model naming scheme associated with the XP, it appears the latest refinement of the AMD’s venerable K7 design has, by most measures relevant to the PC world, eclipsed the performance of the 2 GHz Pentium 4 (P4), the highest speed grade offered for Intel’s first implementation of its new x86 microarchitecture. However, this advantage should prove short-lived, as the second generation 0.13 um Northwood P4 will be officially released in early January. The Northwood will offer higher clock rates, an L2 cache doubled in size, and minor internal performance enhancements.