Features

Physical Specifications

217 square mm
0.18 micron manufacturing process
42 million transistors
423 pins

Size matters

As we mentioned earlier, the Coppermine Pentium 3 has 28 million transistors. The Willamette Pentium 4 will have 42 million transistors and a larger die size, 217 square mm as compared to the P3's 104 square mm die (95 square mm for C-0 P3 processors).

In the case of die size, bigger isn't better. The Pentium 4 is roughly twice as large as the Pentium 3. The P4's larger size will cut the number of chips Intel can fit on a single wafer in half. Larger die sizes also lowers yields since a defect is more likely to occur in a chip with a larger area.

Even though the P4 will initially use the 0.18 micron manufacturing process, we most likely won't see volume P4 production until Intel moves to the 0.13 micron Northwood P4 core next year. Intel still can't keep up with P3 demand, and dedicating manufacturing facilities to the larger Pentium 4 chips will only result in lower chip production.

Intel also plans on switching from 200 mm diameter wafers to larger 300 mm wafers late next year. This should double the number of chips that can fit on each wafer.

NetBurst Architecture

Hyper Pipelined Technology
Advanced Dynamic Execution
Execution Trace Cache
Rapid Execution Engine
400MHz System Bus
SSE2

Bursting with net

Don't you love marketing? NetBurst is the new name for the Pentium 4 processor's new architecture. The architecture design should improve net and multimedia related performance in areas such as imaging, streaming video, speech, and 3D graphics.

At the heart of Intel's Pentium 4 processor is the chip's new Hyper Pipelined Technology. The Pentium 4 will have a 20-stage pipeline, almost double that of the 12-stage Pentium 3 pipeline. The longer pipeline will allow the Pentium 4 to reach higher speeds because each pipeline stage will require fewer gates.