Pentium II Processors breaks the 200 MHz barrier

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.