In October 2001, the Athlon XP regained a clear lead for AMD, but in January 2002, Intel released Pentium 4s with their new Northwood core at 1.6, 1.8, 2.0 and 2.2 GHz.[7][8] Northwood (product code 80532) combined an increase in the secondary cache size from 256 KB to 512 KB (increasing the transistor count to 55 million, up from 42 million) with a transition to a new 130 nm (0.13 micrometer) fabrication process.[8] By making the chip out of smaller transistors, chips can run at higher clocks or at the same speed while producing less heat.
A 2.4 GHz P4 was released in April 2002, and the bus speed increased from 400 MT/s to 533 MT/s for a 2.26 GHz, 2.4 GHz, and 2.53 GHz part in May, 2.66 GHz and 2.8 GHz parts in August, and a 3.06 GHz Pentium 4 arrived in November. With Northwood, the Pentium 4 came of age. The battle for performance leadership remained competitive (as AMD introduced faster versions of the Athlon XP) but most observers agreed that the fastest Northwood P4 was usually ahead of its rival. This was particularly so in the summer of 2002, when AMD's changeover to a 130 nm production process did not help the "Barton" and "Thoroughbred" Athlon XP CPUs clock high enough to overcome the advantage of P4s in the 2.4 to 2.8 GHz range.[9]
The 3.06 GHz processor acquired Hyper-Threading technology that first appeared in Xeon, enabling multiple threads to be run together by duplicating some parts of the processor in order to let the operating system believe that there are two logical processors.
In April 2003, Intel launched new 800 MT/s FSB variants, ranging from 2.4 to 3.0 GHz.[10] This was meant to help the Pentium 4 better compete with AMD's Opteron line of processors. However, when Opteron was launched, due to its server-oriented positioning motherboard manufacturers didn't initially build motherboards with AGP controllers. Because AGP was the primary graphics expansion port at the time, this missing feature prevented the Opteron from encroaching on the Pentium 4's market segment. AMD did boost the Athlon XP's bus speed from 333 MT/s to 400 MT/s, but it wasn't enough to hold off the new 3.0 GHz P4.[11] A 3.2 GHz Pentium 4 Northwood variant was launched in June and the final 3.4 GHz version arrived in early 2004.
Overclocking early stepping Northwood cores yielded a startling phenomenon. When core voltage (Vcore) was increased past 1.7 V, the processor would slowly become more unstable over time, before dying and becoming totally unusable. This became known as Sudden Northwood Death Syndrome, which is caused by electromigration.[12]
A 2.4 GHz P4 was released in April 2002, and the bus speed increased from 400 MT/s to 533 MT/s for a 2.26 GHz, 2.4 GHz, and 2.53 GHz part in May, 2.66 GHz and 2.8 GHz parts in August, and a 3.06 GHz Pentium 4 arrived in November. With Northwood, the Pentium 4 came of age. The battle for performance leadership remained competitive (as AMD introduced faster versions of the Athlon XP) but most observers agreed that the fastest Northwood P4 was usually ahead of its rival. This was particularly so in the summer of 2002, when AMD's changeover to a 130 nm production process did not help the "Barton" and "Thoroughbred" Athlon XP CPUs clock high enough to overcome the advantage of P4s in the 2.4 to 2.8 GHz range.[9]
The 3.06 GHz processor acquired Hyper-Threading technology that first appeared in Xeon, enabling multiple threads to be run together by duplicating some parts of the processor in order to let the operating system believe that there are two logical processors.
In April 2003, Intel launched new 800 MT/s FSB variants, ranging from 2.4 to 3.0 GHz.[10] This was meant to help the Pentium 4 better compete with AMD's Opteron line of processors. However, when Opteron was launched, due to its server-oriented positioning motherboard manufacturers didn't initially build motherboards with AGP controllers. Because AGP was the primary graphics expansion port at the time, this missing feature prevented the Opteron from encroaching on the Pentium 4's market segment. AMD did boost the Athlon XP's bus speed from 333 MT/s to 400 MT/s, but it wasn't enough to hold off the new 3.0 GHz P4.[11] A 3.2 GHz Pentium 4 Northwood variant was launched in June and the final 3.4 GHz version arrived in early 2004.
Overclocking early stepping Northwood cores yielded a startling phenomenon. When core voltage (Vcore) was increased past 1.7 V, the processor would slowly become more unstable over time, before dying and becoming totally unusable. This became known as Sudden Northwood Death Syndrome, which is caused by electromigration.[12]
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