Pentium II Processors breaks the 200 MHz barrier
By Zatni Arbi
PENANG, Malaysia (JP): When I first heard about Intel Corp.'s assembly and testing plant in Penang, Malaysia, I couldn't help feeling a little bit disappointed. Why in Penang? Why not in Batam or Cikarang or Tangerang in Indonesia?
However, as Phil Kelly, Dell's vice president for Asia, told me and several other South East Asian journalists at the recent Intel press gathering here, there were three important factors to consider when choosing where to build a manufacturing plant. First, the required infrastructure should already be in place. Second, logistics should not be any problems. Third, a skilled workforce should be available. Obviously, like Intel, Dell had found that Penang met all these three requirements, and therefore it also established its huge factory and headquarters here. It now serves all its Asian market from here.
I guess Kelly was just being too tactful to mention two other important factors in selecting a suitable location, namely, consistent and transparent government policies and freedom from a high-cost economy. If you've been taking notes of Malaysia's determined and consistent move toward its Vision of 2020, it will immediately become obvious why big players like Intel and Dell have chosen Penang.
Our hope is that our policy makers will realize that investors need at least these five assurances. We have lost out to our neighbors time and time again because of our weaknesses, and it's really time to address these issues.
Dust free
So, up there, among manufacturing plants that belong to Motorola, Dell and Seagate Technology, there is Intel's megaplant for assembling and testing. Inaugurated by Malaysian Minister of Trade and Industry Rafidah Aziz, the plant showcases Intel's clean room -- a room is supposed to be far cleaner than even a surgery in a standard Singapore hospital. Well, if you think of the surgery room in the hospital in Payakumbuh, West Sumatra, where I grew up, this one would perhaps be a thousand times cleaner. Such a clean environment is necessary because even a tiny microscopic spec of dust can spoil the microprocessor chip, which on the market could cost more than Rp 1 million (US$409). To make sure they do not bring dust into the ward, operators have to go through a cleaning process where several high powered fans blow all the dust off their special non-linting, antistatic bunny suit each time they want to go inside.
Of course, the biggest attraction to visitors to this plant is the Bunnyman show by our friend Sean Casey. Not only is Sean a very agile break dancer, he is a technical expert who often comes to Indonesia to help the Glodok people as well as Intel Indonesia's staff keep up with the microprocessor technology.
Pentium II
By now you should have heard or read about Intel's latest generation of chips, the Pentium II processors. The Penang plant does not make these particular chips, but courtesy of Intel Indonesia, I was able to test drive a Pentium II machine and I will hate the day I return it to them.
Containing 7.5 million transistors, the chip is built on a totally new design to reduce costs and provide a wider choice of motherboard design. Unlike the conventional chips, Pentium II comes in a plastic and metal cartridge that connects to the motherboard via what Intel calls Single Edge Contact, or SEC, The computing power of this process comes from a combination of the dynamic execution of Pentium Pro and the MMX technology.
The cache memory is made by third parties. Werner, Intel's manager for Indonesia, Werner, said this was done to make the chip ready for volume shipment quickly. The internal, or L1 cache, has also been increased from 16 KB in Pentium Pro to 64 KB.
As one would expect, the moment the chip hit the street many people will start testing it to the limit to recreate the drama that came after the discovery of the famous Pentium processor flaw. But it seems that this time the so-called errata has nothing to worry about and power users are not really deterred by reports that have been circulating.
Raw speed
The Pentium II machine I borrowed from Intel was an Acer tower. It came with a 17" Acer monitor. Windows 95 was already installed. The machine had a 266 MHz Pentium II processor, 32 MB of RAM and 3 GB hard drive.
Installing Photoshop 4.0 took so little time that I was not it was properly setup. It ran perfectly the first time I loaded it. I was told the program would have run five to six times faster had I downloaded the MMX patches from Adobe's site and installed it on the hard disk. So, desktop publishers, are you still sure the Mac is the better tool for getting your job done?
Marketing manager Thomas was kind enough to send me three CD- ROM based, MMX-enabled programs, namely Visual House, The Third Dimension and Erase Turnabout. The codes in these programs have been optimized to take advantage of the MMX Technology.
On the accompanying picture you can see the screen of Visual Home Deluxe. It's a program that lets you design your own house, place furniture and decoration inside the rooms, and visualize everything in three dimensions. Push the mouse cursor a little to the left, and the room will turn to your right as if you're turning your head to the left. Push the mouse up, and you'll get closer to the object in front of you.
A program like this one requires a huge amount of computing power. I first played around with a similar software program about four years ago. It was called Virtus WalkThrough. I was still using a 386DX 33 MHz machine, and it was so slow that I gave up testing it before long. With Pentium II, moving from one room to another in the house I loaded from Visual Home's sample collection could be very fast. Sometimes it is even too fast that suddenly I found myself already outside the house and had to retreat through the wall. Whew!
Final words
One good thing about the Pentium II chips is that its prices are not as high as what Intel traditionally charges early adopters. In the past, the chips' prices were exceedingly high when first introduced and got lower over time. This time the prices are comparable to their predecessors. Reports in some American PC magazines even state that a 233 MHz system could even cost less than a comparably configured 200 MHz Pentium Pro machine. So, if you need a high performance computer today, don't look any further. A Pentium II should satisfy even the heavy- weight graphics artist or video editor.