The successor to Intel’s sixth-generation processors, including the Pentium II and Pentium III, this chip heralds the seventh generation of Intel processor technology. What is revolutionary about the is its deep pipelining architecture; it is implemented in 20 stages (compared to 10 in the Pentium III). This enables the chip to run at significantly higher clock speeds than the Pentium III, which could not be pushed beyond 1.2 GHz.
The Pentium 4’s design enables Intel engineers to keep increasing the chip’s clock speed to the point that this design tradeoff will become moot; experts believe that Intel will be able to push the s clock speed to as much as 15 GHz. Other improvements include system data bus speeds of up to 533 MHz when used with Rambus RDRAM memory, improved branch prediction, two arithmetic-logic units (ALU) that run at twice the chip’s clock speed, and an expanded set of Streaming SIMD Extensions (SSE). See arithmetic-logic unit (ALU), Athlon, clock speed, Pentium III, Rambus DRAM, Streaming SIMD Extensions (SSE).
Technipages Explains Pentium 4
Pentium 4 is a brand by Intel for a whole series of single-core CPUs for desktops, laptops, and entry level servers, it is a seventh-generation CPU, succeeding the sixth generation of Intel processors including Pentium 2 and 3. The processors were produced from November 20, 2000 to August 8, 2008.
The standing out factor for Pentium 4 being its new chip architecture, which unlike Pentium 3 (implemented in 10 stages) is implemented in 20 stages. This is the underlying mechanism for the rapid processing speed of the chip. Pentium CPU clock rate ranges from 1.3 GHz-3.8 GHz while that of Pentium 3 couldn’t be pushed beyond 1.2 GHz.
This design came at the expense of Pentium 4 only being able to complete fewer executions per clock cycle, and this resulted in Athlon and Pentium 3 processors running faster than Pentium 4 even at their lower speed clock rate.
Intel engineers’ continuously improved Pentium 4 chip’s clock rate until the downside was minimal. Other improvements made on Pentium 4 include system data bus speeds of up to 533 MHz when used with Rambus RDRAM memory, improved branch prediction, two arithmetic-logic units (ALU) that run at twice the chip’s clock speed, and an expanded set of Streaming SIMD Extensions (SSE).
Common Uses of Pentium 4
- Pentium 4 brand of Intel’s single-core CPUs for desktops, laptops and entry level servers only ran for almost eight years
- The underlying technology for Pentium 4 lies in its new chip architecture, which is implemented in over 20 stages.
- Pentium 3 was succeeded by Pentium 4 which was supposed to be better, but it was only able to run few executions per clock cycle; eventually it was improved by Intel engineers
Common Misuses of Pentium 4
- Athlon and Pentium 3 even though they were executed over 10 stages eventually replaced the Pentium 4 design which was implemented over 20 stages, due to a design flaw
- Intel engineers only fixed Pentium 4’s trade-off of few executions per clock cycle, no other improvement was made.