Three years ago, AMD released a line of processors with the new A64 architecture and immediately won a technology advantage. Athlon64 processors ran at much lower clock speeds than Intel Pentium4 but demonstrated high higher performance. That was especially seen in gaming applications, i.e. in the field which is most common for home-based users. The advantage in speed was won due to the shorter pipeline as well as the integrated memory controller. Intel was struggling to the very best of its power continuously raising the clock speeds of it processors. But ... stopped the race having finally not achieved the 4 GHz threshold. Further rise in the clock speeds was simply impossible: the heat emission went beyond all the reasonable boundaries.
To be fair, we should note that Intel's latest processors produced following the 65 nm process technology smoothed the problem of power consumption a bit. But Intel failed to grab the performance crown. Therefore, AMD was gradually expanding its market share, and in mere three years it overcame the ~25% barrier. In fact, that is the maximum possible market share for AMD because of the lack of production capacities.
Of course, Intel was strongly against this situation. And some time ago there appeared first rumors on the forthcoming new processor architecture. There also appeared first specimens - I mean mobile CPUs Pentium-M on the Dothan core. Manufactured following the 90-nm process technology and running at ~ 2.5 GHz clock speeds, these processors showed a very high operating speed comparable to to that of top-end desktop AMD and Intel processors. Pentium-M proved so highly attractive that some companies prepared matching solutions for desktop systems.
A bit later though, there appeared first information on processors built on the Intel Core 2 Duo architecture, which made the interest to Pentium-M gradually fade. Roughly speaking, the Core 2 Duo architecture is a logical evolution of the Pentium Pro architecture with the use of all Intel's technologies and developments. In particular, the new processors offer a rather short pipeline (14 stages) and are able decoding and executing up to instructions per cycle. For more detail of the Core 2 Duo architecture, read our previous materials. Today, we are focusing on the practical aspects of operating the new processors.
To be fair, we should note that Intel's latest processors produced following the 65 nm process technology smoothed the problem of power consumption a bit. But Intel failed to grab the performance crown. Therefore, AMD was gradually expanding its market share, and in mere three years it overcame the ~25% barrier. In fact, that is the maximum possible market share for AMD because of the lack of production capacities.
Of course, Intel was strongly against this situation. And some time ago there appeared first rumors on the forthcoming new processor architecture. There also appeared first specimens - I mean mobile CPUs Pentium-M on the Dothan core. Manufactured following the 90-nm process technology and running at ~ 2.5 GHz clock speeds, these processors showed a very high operating speed comparable to to that of top-end desktop AMD and Intel processors. Pentium-M proved so highly attractive that some companies prepared matching solutions for desktop systems.
A bit later though, there appeared first information on processors built on the Intel Core 2 Duo architecture, which made the interest to Pentium-M gradually fade. Roughly speaking, the Core 2 Duo architecture is a logical evolution of the Pentium Pro architecture with the use of all Intel's technologies and developments. In particular, the new processors offer a rather short pipeline (14 stages) and are able decoding and executing up to instructions per cycle. For more detail of the Core 2 Duo architecture, read our previous materials. Today, we are focusing on the practical aspects of operating the new processors.
