Has anyone written a basic article to take the ignorant up to speed on CPU's?

[barrister_69]

I was there when 286's came out, but I quit following the progression at Pentium 4. I had two P4 systems die this month, so I am finally back on the market, and I don't know anything anymore. I want just a basic primer to take me through the progression of CPU's to where we are today. I read how Intel built backdoors into their i5 and i7 chips, so I am wondering if AMD did too.

 

[Yingda Wang]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Intel_microprocessors

 

[hunter315]

Wikipedia?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_general_purpose_CPUs#1990_to_today:_looking_forward

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Central_processing_unit


There is no point covering a progression, too much irrelevant data which hides the important bits, just look at the modern stuff, and actually all you should care about these days are benchmarks, you cannot derive a CPU's performance from the specs on its box, it cannot be done.

 

[jacobian]

Basically, all of current Intel CPUs trace their roots to the Intel Core architecture. The Intel Core architecture itself traces its roots to Pentium 3's architecture, while Pentium 4's Netburst had been abandoned.

The latest four iterations were:

Haswell
Ivy Bridge
Sandy Bridge
Westmere

Each successive architecture improves IPC, power consumption, etc. However, the improvements have been so gradual and small that people with state of art Sandy Bridge CPUs have little or no reason to upgrade to newer processors. The current processor labels are as follows:

Desktop CPUs:

Pentium G: dual-core with basic graphics
Core i3: dual-core with hyperthreading, mainstream HD graphics
Core i5: quad-core with turbo, mainstream HD graphics
Core i7: quad-core with turbo and hyperthreading, mainstream HD graphics

Mobile:

Same deal except that mobile Core i5 is dual core with hyperthreading and turbo
Low power Core i7 is also dual-core with hyperthreading and turbo
40watt Core i7 is quad-core
There is a big deal of performance difference between ultra-low power (15watt) and normal power (35-40) parts.

For AMD, look up Piledriver and Steamroller microarchitectures. AMD FX processors come in 4-8 core configurations, but per-core performance is lower compared to Intel. It looks like AMD maybe abandoning the FX line and replacing with APUs (CPU and 3D graphics on the same die). The APUs are two and quad-core based on the same architecture (or newer) as FX. A typical APU for CPU only tasks is about as fast as Core i3 at best, but has better graphics (still not as good as a $100 dedicated graphics card)

 

[jaguarskx]

A lot has changed since the days of the Pentium 4.

AMD and Intel no longer exists as both have gone bankrupt. Now VIA Technologies dominates the world.

Similar to how Taco Bell won the fast food war in Demolition Man.