Intel likely to reveal details of Silverthorne next week
Intel will offer a detailed
look at a new processor next week during a presentation at the International
Solid State Circuits Conference (ISSCC) that should set the stage for an
unexpectedly close battle with Taiwan's Via
Technologies.
Intel's presentation will cover technical details of an unnamed low-power processor
that is made using a 45-nanometer process and designed for mobile Internet devices,
according to an abstract contained in the ISSCC
program. That's the same general description used by Intel to describe its
upcoming Silverthorne processor.
Intel executives declined to confirm whether the ISSCC presentation covers
Silverthorne but said the abstract provided an accurate description of the unspecified
processor. If the chip described is indeed Silverthorne, the presentation appears
set to confirm many rumored details of the chip's architecture and characteristics.
Most importantly, Silverthorne is rumored to be an in-order processor, the
same as the processor Intel will detail next week, according to the abstract.
In layman's terms, this means the chip functions like a factory with a single
assembly line and is capable of processing one operation at a time. An in-order
processor must complete that operation before it can move on to another operation.
This is a different chip architecture from that used in Intel's other processors
but it's the same as Via Technologies' low-power C7 chip, which has proved popular
among the portable device makers that are Silverthorne's target market.
The processor that Intel will discuss next week is also a dual-issue processor,
just as Silverthorne is rumored to be. This feature -- which Intel is likely
to emphasize at ISSCC -- allows two instructions to be issued at a time and
should give Silverthorne a performance advantage over the C7, which can issue
only one instruction at a time.
If these rumored characteristics of Silverthorne are confirmed next week, the
stage will be set for an unexpectedly close contest between Intel and Via's
upcoming low-power Isaiah processors, which are also designed for small, portable
computers.
Tiny by comparison to Intel and Advanced
Micro Devices, Via has nevertheless managed to carve out a comfortable niche
selling the inexpensive, low-power C7. Beset by a dying third-party chipset
business, Via hopes to become a mainstream processor supplier with its upcoming
Isaiah processors, which the company unveiled last week.
Unlike the C7 and Silverthorne, Isaiah uses a superscalar, out-of-order processor
architecture. This architecture, which is used in high-end chips from Intel
and AMD, generally offers better performance than an in-order design and is
akin to a factory equipped with multiple assembly lines capable of processing
different operations at the same time.
The performance of Isaiah is further enhanced by being superscalar, or having
the ability to process multiple instructions during every clock cycle.
Centaur, the Via subsidiary that handles processor design for the company,
is confident that Isaiah will outperform Silverthorne, even though an accurate
comparison of both chips won't be possible until the two processors can be benchmarked
and assessed by independent observers.
Nevertheless, Isaiah looks good on paper. Via chips based on the new architecture
will offer 1M byte of L2 cache and support a front-side bus running at speeds
up to 1.3GHz. By comparison, the chip that Intel will reveal next week has 512K
bytes of cache and a 533MHz front-side bus.
But the ISSCC abstract raises as many questions as it appears to answer. For
example, it doesn't specify how many cores the new Intel chip will use and gives
no indication for how fast these cores will run.
Silverthorne, and a related processor called Diamondville, are widely expected
to be available in single-core and dual-core versions. They are also expected
to run at roughly the same clock speeds as the Isaiah chips, will be available
in versions running from 400MHz up to 2GHz.
IDG News Service
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