Couple of weeks ago, Intel had officially announced the EOL status of the Netburst architecture on which the current Pentium 4 are based. Intel has revealed the new technologies supporting the future processors and architectures. As we will summarize afterwards, it is a quite major turn: the MHz myth is dead, and today one should rather consider the ratio between Performance/Power (W) as a new scale to compare and evaluate performance between processors. As shown below, a roadmap for the mobile processor Yonah already displays Power consumption in parallel to CPU clockspeed. This new scale is names "performance per watt" by Intel.
If we look closer to mobile processor roadmap, one can really notice that Intel strategy is based on platforms, each platform featuring one chipset, one processor and one performance level.
Below is the roadmap describing the different technologies associated with different mobile processors that will be released till June 2006.
One can clearly see the transition between the current Sonoma architecture supporting the today's pentium M (Dothan), then it will evolved to the Napa platform with the first dual core mobile processor Yonah (65nm but still based on Pentium II and III technology) before evolving to the completely new architecture, also named "next generation power-optimized microarchitecture", featuring Napa refreshed platform associated with newly designed Merom processor, bringing 64-bit support to Intel-based notebooks.
Regarding desktop processors, Intel will introduce different platforms dedicated to different functions : home or office, desktops or servers.
The first Conroe processor should arrive mid-2006, and will be available on 2 platforms, depending on the targeted market; it will probably be different at the GPU level, either a chipset-integrated GPU, or a third party GPY from ATI or nVidia.
To finish up, one can see below the impact of both 65nm process associated to the new Intel architecture : the photo shows a Pentium 4 D (dual core 65nm) based on Netburst technology (bottom) vs. a Conroe (dual core 65 nm) based on the next generation power-optimized microarchitecture.
The new Intel architecture is a rather radical turn, since we will move from a 31 stages pipeline for the P4 D to a 14 stages pipeline for the Conroe. Such a transition will of course limit the maximal core frequency, but it will ensure a much better performance level and an improved power consumption management. In addition, Conroe core will be wider allowing more parallel design capable of issuing, executing, and retiring four instructions at once (vs three today).
From all those roadmaps, one can draw a better calendar for the future MacIntel, so the first models to appear should be :
- PowerBook based on Merom in June 2006 (possible availability in september)
- iBook based on Yonah in June 2006 (possible availability in september)
- Mac mini and eMac should also shift to Yonah by the end of 2006
- then Conroe should find its way into iMac by the end of 2006
- As expected, PowerMac and Xserve should be the last models to receive x86 processors, probably based on Whitefield by mid-2007, except if Apple is pushed to adopt x86 faster for those models (then probably Conroe) due to the slow down of R&D/production for the PPC970MP.
PS: in case there is a delay in Merom roadmap, Apple will probably launch PB with Yonah inside, then later on, move PB to Merom, while the iBook will receive the Yonah from the first generation PB x86, allowing Apple to save on hardware design.
