It's Giga Hertz Time
Northwood Chasing Willamette
Before we will get to the latest developments and ideas of AMD, we should start with the latest Intel stuff, simply because it is shorter, easier to understand and because it is IDF time, where Intel is 'architecting the digital universe' for all the poor bastards that think that the many billion year old analog universe just ain't good enough.
Right now Intel is shipping samples of future Pentium 4 processors with the 0.13 micron core 'Northwood' to OEMs, at core clocks of 2 and 2.2 GHz. Those samples are of 'A2'-stepping, but running just fine, even though the A2-microcode (that is always used to fix minor processor bugs and usually found in the motherboard's BIOS) is only in beta stage. As we already know, the future 'Northwood' Pentium 4 will have 512 kB second level cache, which is one reason why its performance is superior to that of the current 'Willamette' Pentium 4. The 0.13 micron process ensures a lower power dissipation, so that Northwood will remain cooler than Willamette, at least at clock speeds of 2 and 2.2 GHz.
Northwood's performance advance over Willamette is just enough to equalize the performance loss that you encounter when running Pentium 4 in a i845 motherboard with PC133 SDRAM instead of an i850 motherboard with PC800 RDRAM. Therefore the 'Northwoods' will be some 5-10% faster than current Pentium 4 processors at the same clock, which is due to more than just the doubled L2-cache size. Other architectural improvements that haven't been disclosed yet are also responsible for the improved performance.
The new Pentium 4 is currently targeted for a release in December 2001, but since times are difficult Intel may release it earlier.