Processor Efficiency
The main reason the 486 is considered fast relative to the 386 is that it executes twice as many instructions in the same number of cycles. The same thing is true for a Pentium; it executes about twice as many instructions in a given number of cycles as a 486. Therefore, given the same clock speed, a Pentium is twice as fast as a 486, and consequently a 133 MHz 486 class processor (such as the AMD 5x86-133) is not even as fast as a 75 MHz Pentium! That is because Pentium megahertz are “worth” about double what 486 megahertz are worth in terms of instructions completed per cycle. The Pentium II and III are about 50% faster than an equivalent Pentium at a given clock speed because they can execute about that many more instructions in the same number of cycles.
Unfortunately, after the Pentium III, it becomes much more difficult to compare processors on clock speed alone. This is because the different internal architectures make some processors more efficient than others, but these same efficiency differences result in circuitry that is capable of running at different maximum speeds. The less efficient the circuit, the higher the clock speed it can attain, and vice versa. Another difference is that some of the later processors include varying sizes of L2 and L3 cache.
One of the biggest factors in efficiency is the number of stages in the processor’s internal pipeline:
| Processor | Pipeline Depth |
|---|---|
| Pentium III | 10-stage |
| Pentium M/Core | 10-stage |
| Athlon/XP | 10-stage |
| Athlon 64/Phenom/II/FX | 12-stage |
| Core 2/i3/i5/i7 | 14-stage |
| Pentium 4 | 20-stage |
| Pentium 4 Prescott | 31-stage |
| Pentium D | 31-stage |
A deeper pipeline effectively breaks down instructions into smaller microsteps, which allows overall higher clock rates to be achieved using the same silicon technology. However, this also means that overall fewer instructions can be executed in a single cycle as compared to processors with shorter pipelines. This is because, if a branch prediction or speculative execution step fails (which happens fairly frequently inside the processor as it attempts to line up instructions in advance), the entire pipeline has to be flushed and refilled. Thus, if you compared an Intel Core i7 or AMD FX to a Pentium 4 running at the same clock speed, the Core i7 and FX would execute more instructions in the same number of cycles.
Although it is a disadvantage to have a deeper pipeline in terms of instruction efficiency, processors with deeper pipelines can run at higher clock rates on a given manufacturing technology. Thus, even though a deeper pipeline might be less efficient, the higher resulting clock speeds can make up for it. The deeper 20- or 31-stage pipeline in the P4 architecture enabled significantly higher clock speeds to be achieved using the same silicon die process as other chips. As an example, the 0.13-micron process Pentium 4 ran up to 3.4 GHz, whereas the Athlon XP topped out at 2.2 GHz (3200+ model) in the same introduction timeframe. Even though the Pentium 4 executes fewer instructions in each cycle, the overall higher cycling speeds made up for the loss of efficiency; the higher clock speed versus the more efficient processing effectively cancelled each other out.
Unfortunately, the deep pipeline combined with high clock rates did come with a penalty in power consumption, and therefore heat generation as well. Eventually, it was determined that the power penalty was too great, causing Intel to drop back to a more efficient design in its newer Core microarchitecture processors. Rather than solely increase clock rates, performance was increased by combining multiple processors into a single chip, thus improving the effective instruction efficiency even further. This began the push toward multicore processors.
One thing is clear in all of this confusion: Raw clock speed is not a good way to compare chips, unless they are from the same manufacturer, model, and family.
To fairly compare various CPUs at different clock speeds, Intel originally devised a specific series of benchmarks called the Intel Comparative Microprocessor Performance (iCOMP) index. The iCOMP index benchmark was released in original iCOMP, iCOMP 2.0, and iCOMP 3.0 versions.
The iCOMP 2.0 index was derived from several independent benchmarks as an indication of relative processor performance. The benchmarks balance integer with floating-point and multimedia performance.
