Roadmap Intel

Obviously Intel's hopes to regain the performance crown are all focused on the upcoming Pentium 4 processor. This completely new design, also known under the code name 'Willamette', will enable much higher clock speeds, starting at 1.4 and 1.5 GHz by the time of its release. Take those high frequencies with a grain of salt though, since it seems rather obvious right now that Pentium 4 will be slower than its predecessor Pentium III in a clock-for-clock comparison using common software. This is not necessarily a problem, since Pentium 4 can obviously afford to be a bit slower clock-for-clock, because it won't be released in clock speeds of less than 1.4 GHz, which is already 40% higher than the fastest Pentium III processor that's available right now.

A look at the roadmap makes it even more obvious that Pentium 4 will most definitely stay way ahead of Pentium III, since Intel is planning Pentium 4 processors at 1.7 GHz or more for Q1/2001 already and Q2/2001 is supposed to be the time when the first 2 GHz Pentium 4 will see the light of the world.

Intel's aggressive Pentium 4 forecast seems to be a strong sign that the production of Pentium 4 is running very well. Intel wants to force its way back to being the performance as well as the market leader in the x86-market and AMD will have quite a tough time to compete with 2 GHz Pentium 4 processors in terms of performance.

The most logical step to improve Coppermine is obviously to shrink its die down to a 0.13-micron process. This is exactly what is going to happen, but it is by far not all. The next proper version of Pentium III will use a core with the code name 'Tualatin' and it comes with the following specs:

1.13 / 1.26 GHz at launch date
512kB on-die L2 Cache
Differential Clocking = a new clock spec
VRM 8.5 = a new voltage spec
AGTL (1.2VTT) replaces AGTL+ (1.5VTT) = a new bus spec
AGP 4X 1.5 V
CPU will look more like current SocketA processors with the four pads, but with an additional ring around the flip chip to make sure that it doesn't get destroyed by the heat sink, called FC-PGA2 = FC-PGA with integrated Heat Spreader. FCPGA2-processor will be 3.5 mm high instead of FCPGA's height of only 1.9 mm.