Bruce writes:
> Second, according to the DDJ Developer Newsletter, Intel's P6 processor is
> being released under the name "Pentium Pro." Wild speculation: either
> Intel's marketing people are making a huge mistake -- which seems unlikely
> -- or the P7, reported in several places to be the fruit of the Intel/HP
> development agreement, is close enough to reality that Intel thinks a major
> new marketing campaign would be wasted before it could peak. Remember
> Spectrum overtaking Vision in 1984?
 
Why?  Is Pentium Pro a bad name?  Should they have come up with something
totally differnt?  The P6 is just an evolution of the P5, not a totally
new architecture like the P7 is.  The P7 will almost certainly get a
Pentium-something name as well.  Intel has spent a *lot* of money getting
name recognition for "Pentium" and the P7 will need to stress compatibility
more than anything else when it comes out.  The P7 will be a "Pentium"
for the same reason that the PA-RISC MPE systems were called HP3000s and
not HP4000s or somesuch.
 
Last week's Computerworld had a front page article talking about the P7
chip from Intel.  It is indeed the first chip based on the new HP and Intel
architecture code named "Tahoe".  Intel will apparently release a 32bit
version in late 1997, to be followed by the real 64bit version. the 32bit
version will be an Intel-only chip (HP is apparently not going to bother
with a 32bit version, but Intel is worried about the risk in jumping
directly to 64bits).  Both versions will run on 2.5V.  The 32bit version
will allegedly get 1,000 SPECint92, and the 64bit version 1,500 SPECint92
performance.  The "Pentium Pro" at 150Mhz is supposed to around 250
SPECint92 or so, so we are talking about a 4-6x increase in speed in only
a two year period.
 
The new architecture will not be able to execute either PS-RISC or x86
instructions directly, but will supposedly be able to emulate both
significantly faster than today's processors can run them natively.
 
This kind of performance is dependent on a new generation of compilers
that can take advantage of Tahoe's VLIW architecture.  Much of the job
of running your program moves from the CPU back to the compiler.  This
makes the quality of the compilers / code generators essential to the
performance of the system, much more so in fact than for a traditional
RISC architecture like PA-RISC.  Since writing quality software (like
compilers) has proven to be so much harder than developing fast CPU
chips, it will be interesting to see if HP can really pull this off.
It also may mean that either all third-party compiler writers are out
of business, or everyone will be using an HP developed code generator,
which means that the performance you get and the bugs you see may be
the same regardless of whether you use an HP, Microsoft, or Borland
compiler.
 
It's gonna be interesting :-)
 
G.
 
G.