New Intel desktop processor: Faster and more advanced

Zatni Arbi, Columnist, Jakarta, zatni@cbn.net.id

If you have been reading this column, you will know that I use a 733 MHz Pentium III PC. Alright, I admit I have overclocked the chip and forced it to run at 907 MHz. I could have set it higher, although not by much more. However, even at the 733 MHz speed originally specified by Intel to this processor, I would have had no problem running all the programs that I use in my daily work.

In fact, I am still satisfied with the performance of this machine. I have been mulling the idea of buying a new notebook to replace my Pentium 133 MHz Siemens Nixdorf, and what I have in mind so far is also a Pentium III Mobile-based notebook, perhaps not the Pentium 4 version.

I also use Microsoft Word and Excel almost all day. I sometimes use Corel PHOTO-PAINT 9.0 to convert files into JPG. Occasionally, I also burn a CD on my CD-RW or create a PDF file with Adobe Acrobat. All of these applications can run effectively on my Pentium III machine.

Clearly, 3-D games are not my cup of tea. But, then again, a high-end 3-D games require a fast 3-D graphics subsystem, more than a blazing processor.

However, the microprocessor industry is anything but dormant. So, my two-year old PC is already many steps behind the times. First, in the market today we are talking about Pentium 4 instead of Pentium III. Second, the latest processor from Intel has a clock speed of 3.06 GHz, which is more than four times faster than the processor that is helping me to write this article. * Not just speed

Earlier this month Intel Indonesia launched the latest Pentium 4, which runs at 3.06 GHz. Manufactured with the 0.13 micron technology, it contains around 55 million transistors, and the wires that interconnect all these transistors are one thousand times smaller than a human hair. It is an engineering marvel, to say the least.

Raw speed is not what this chip is all about, though. With this new generation of Pentium 4, Intel has introduced a new technology called Hyper Threading (HT). With this technology, which is part of Intel's NetBurst microarchitecture, the operating system will see a single processor as if it were more than one processor. Multithreaded software, which has been split into multiple streams of instructions, will then be able to send its instructions to the "separate processors". The instructions are then executed in parallel by the single multithreaded processor. The result of this optimized use of the processor's execution resources is a significant increase in processor output.

As we can predict, in order to be able to take advantage of the HT technology, we will have to make sure that the other components of the system also support this technology. In addition to the HT processor, the system will have to incorporate an HT-enabling chipset and BIOS, an operating system that supports HT. Intel's press release mentioned Windows XP and Linux as the two examples of the operating systems with the support for HT. An HT-capable piece of hardware or software will carry an Intel logo with the HT signature.

One thing to remember is that HT does not increase the performance to match a dual processor system. The reason is that a single HT processor still has to rely on one single cache memory. However, a performance increase of around 25 percent on top of the performance gain is certainly a welcome improvement.

Another interesting thing is that, according to Budi Wahyu Jati, Intel Corp.'s country manager for Indonesia, this processor requires better air circulation to avoid overheating. He suggested that a dedicated air duct is used to blow cool air onto the processor's heat sink, and this additional feature will become even more necessary as Intel releases faster Pentium 4 processors. * Applications

The question is what do we need with this high-octane horsepower for? Certainly, servers will benefit from them. Servers, by definition, have to handle multiple tasks at the same time. In fact, Hyper Threading began to be available in Intel's Xeon processors in spring of this year, a couple of months before it became available on a desktop Pentium 4 processor. The Xeon processors are targeted for use in servers and workstations, and Intel launched the new versions with speeds up to 2.8 GHz just last week.

Those who often work in multi-tasking modes will appreciate the HT capability of the new Pentium 4. This group of users may include those who do graphics rendering while ripping MP3 music, for example. The new technology is also useful if you continuously run anti-virus and data encryption utilities.

At present, however, I do not really see much use of such an abundance of computing power for mainstream desktop users. In the future, when real-time machine translation, voice recognition and motion-tracking capabilities have become part of the human- computer interaction, this level of computing power will certainly be of great help.

Game lovers will benefit from the new technology offered by the current Pentium 4 processor provided they also use the hardware that supports it, such as nVidia's GeForce latest graphics processing units (GPUs). These combinations do not come cheap, though. According to the press release, the new processor's price is US$637 for a quantity of 1000 units.

Now, if you think that Indonesian customers will not spend thousands of US dollars to buy the fastest computer hardware just to run games, you are wrong. Ask computer stores in Ratu Plaza, and they will tell you the cynical truth about their customers' incredible buying power, despite the country's pitiful economic condition.