Intel

Taking it on the road

With the 2.0GHz Pentium 4 and 845 launches behind them, Intel is now focusing their efforts on Northwood and their DDR variant of 845. If you recall, Northwood is Intel's next generation Pentium 4 processor. Unlike today's Pentium 4 chips, Northwood is based on Intel's advanced 0.13-micron manufacturing process (down from 0.18-micron). By moving to a smaller process, Northwood chips will consume less power and therefore generate less heat. As a result, Northwood processors will be able to scale to higher clock speeds (and as we all hope, will be able to overclock significantly).

The smaller manufacturing process will also give Intel the opportunity to include more features on the chip. It has been rumored that Northwood will include a larger onboard cache. The additional memory should result in a performance boost for Northwood although we'll have to wait until the final product is launched before we can provide you with official numbers. With 2.0GHz available now, it's only natural to assume that Northwood will launch at speeds in excess of 2GHz, although this has not officially been confirmed by Intel. Northwood was originally slated to be launched in the second half of this year, but with the year winding down it's looking like Northwood will miss 2001.

845 Gets DDR

On the chipset front, Intel is now putting the finishing touches on their second 845 product, which will feature support for DDR SDRAM. Technically, the memory controller in Intel's 845 products supports both memory types, just as the VIA and SiS DDR chipsets are backwards compatible with conventional SDRAM. With 2.1GB/sec of bandwidth the DDR variant of 845 does a better job of keeping the Pentium 4 fed with data, although it still doesn't match the bandwidth of RDRAM. For this reason Intel will continue to focus on the 850 chipset with RDRAM for the performance segment, while the 845 chipset will fill the mainstream space.

Like Northwood, a shipping date for the launch of this chipset hasn't been announced, although Intel has previously commented that it will be available early in 2002. We saw quite a few DDR 845 products on display during Comdex, and all are close to final release. Unlike the original Pentium 4 launch last year where only a handful of motherboard manufacturers participated in the launch, practically every manufacturer is onboard for 845. So far, it appears these 845 products will be very attractively priced, although we were told by one manufacturer that the SiS 645 DDR chipset was priced $20 lower than 845, an extraordinary price difference as far as board-level components go. Look for some heavy competition in this area soon.

In closing, Intel is continuing to move forward with its transition to Pentium 4. With Northwood, Intel will continue to scale the Pentium 4 to higher clock speeds, slowly moving the older Pentium 4 chips to even lower price points. On the platform side, the 845 chipset with SDRAM will bring the Pentium 4 to the corporate segment, while the DDR variant of the 845 chipset will be aimed towards consumers. Intel believes the combination of both products will make the Pentium 4 platform a more prevalent solution than it is today.