Intel Shelton processor

[Yousuf Khan]

How about neither of the above cores? Maybe it's based off the old
PIII core? Intel is still pumping out PIII core chips (essentially
Celerons) for Microsoft's XBox, maybe these are some sort of failed
update for the XBox?

It certainly doesn't sound like this is going to be a big volume
product, probably designed to compete with VIA's C3 chips as much as
anything else.

I've never heard of the P3 core being migrated to 90nm, which this articles
says the Shelton is. The Xbox chips are still being produced on 130nm
(possibly 180nm) production lines. Since Intel has so many fabs, this is no
big deal for it to be running multiple process nodes.

Yousuf Khan

 

[The little lost angel]

If Microsoft tried to sell XP Lite for $15 in Asia, then it would have no
choice but to sell that in North America. Nobody in Asia would buy it, it's
still way too expensive.

For $15, I would say there would be people who will buy it. But it
would also depend heavily on the degree of crippleness, home
networking is relatively common nowadays. Now if they are willing to
sell the full version for $15 or even $25, they will definitely drive
the pirates out of the market pPPp

--
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If you need basic to med complexity webpages at affordable rates, email me
Standard HTML, SHTML, MySQL + PHP or ASP, Javascript.
If you really want, FrontPage & DreamWeaver too.
But keep in mind you pay extra bandwidth for their bloated code

 

[Yousuf Khan]

There you go. You just told me you believe it is P4-based because P4
is the _older_ Celeron, but right away turned around and told me the
_oldest_ Celeron is from the P6-line, as is Pentium-M. By deduction,
the _older_ Celeron is the one from the P6-line, and thus the crippled
Pentium-M.

No, you didn't read it carefully enough. I said "the older _90nm_ Celerons
are P4-based". The emphasis on "90nm" there. Of course, the oldest Celerons
are P6-based (Pentium II generation specifically) and probably from the
250nm process, but that's irrelevant.

It's not 0k cache, it is without the L2 cache. The P-M still has
Harvard L1 caches: 32k I, 32k D if I remember correctly. So it
already has your 64k it needs to come to life.

Well, it is only L2 caches we were talking about here, I assumed. The
distinction between L1 and L2 was already drawn in the first message in this
thread. For several generations now, since after the 486, it's been mostly
the size of the L2 that's driven most of the performance in chips. It was
especially extreme in the Pentium 4 generation, but the P6 generations also
required a certain minimal amount of L2 to work fast. So the 64K I was
talking about was L2 cache, of course.

Yousuf Khan

 

[Robert Myers]

That kind of cut down system will be good enough for the internet. I'll tell
you that many people are interested in a cheap way of getting on the internet,
also here in the 'west'.

The bottom-line requirement, I suspect, is the ability to handle some
quality of streaming media over a "modem" that itself eats cycles. I
think that's why we're seeing these relatively muscular cache-starved
puzzlers: Nehemiah, Netburst Celeron, now this. Not a good deal for
recompiling the linux kernel, but just fine if all you need to do is
stream processing and the cache is needed only to cope with hiccups in
the stream.

RM

 

[Johannes H Andersen]

While I agree branding is important, but unless the price parity is
non-existent, for 3rd world income levels, the price should win most
of the time. People would rather be able to brag about quantity they
already are familiar with, i.e. "my cpu (Sempron) runs at 1.8Ghz and
has 80GB of ram! Yours only 1Ghz and 256MB! hahaha loser!"

That kind of cut down system will be good enough for the internet. I'll tell
you that many people are interested in a cheap way of getting on the internet,
also here in the 'west'. Secondhand old computers might not be reliable,
depending on what life they've had and the documentation might be missing.
A new 40GB drive costs only £30, so why struggle with an old duff.

This post is written on my oldie 233 MHz P1 that is in fine shape. Yes,
I've just build a P4 system, but why power it up for an email?

 

[Tony Hill]

The first thing they should get rid of is the stupid pointless,
wasting my time animations...

Not a bad idea, though I doubt that they'll go. XP Lite will probably
strip out things like Media Player, the firewall, networking
capabilities (XP Home already strips some of those out), etc. In
other words, they'll remove the things that people might actually
want.

Multiple user login is fine, who really
uses Windows as a multiple login workstation anyway? pP

<looks around and raises hand> Uhh.. I do! Quite a useful feature,
lets me log in as a non-admin and run everything like that and just
jump over to my admin account if/when I need to install something or
do something that requires admin privileges.

I think I'm in the minority though!

While I agree branding is important, but unless the price parity is
non-existent, for 3rd world income levels, the price should win most
of the time. People would rather be able to brag about quantity they
already are familiar with, i.e. "my cpu (Sempron) runs at 1.8Ghz and
has 80GB of ram! Yours only 1Ghz and 256MB! hahaha loser!"

Bragging about having an Intel vs a AMD might not work well,
especially if the Shelton develops the same reputation as the Celeron.
Till this day, I still meet plenty of people who will insist on
getting a Intel despite a tight budget BUT refuse adamantly to even
consider a Celeron.

Yup, I've met many myself as well, though with the quality of current
Celerons it's definitely not a bad idea to avoid them.

Brand loyalty is pretty strong in some areas of computing, though much
more so for the Dell vs. HPaq factor (hence the reason why HP sells
both "HP Pavilion" and "Compaq Presario" systems that are essentially
identical). Even at the component level though you'll still see
pretty strong brand loyalty though, just ask some techs about what
kind of hard drives they use (or refuse to use), almost all techs have
at least one of the major brands that they simply will NOT use.

 

[Tony Hill]

I've never heard of the P3 core being migrated to 90nm, which this articles
says the Shelton is. The Xbox chips are still being produced on 130nm
(possibly 180nm) production lines. Since Intel has so many fabs, this is no
big deal for it to be running multiple process nodes.

Intel usually keeps two process nodes going for most of their fabs and
does a bit of leapfrogging, ie those old 180nm fabs would probably get
upgraded to the 90nm fabs while they keep the 130nm ones kicking
around until the next upgrade.

The XBox chips were being produced on the 180nm production line
initially, but producing them on a 90nm line would be more economical.
They are probably selling enough chips just in the XBox to make the
switch-over worthwhile, and if they could additionally get a
dirt-cheap processor for developing markets out of the deal it might
just seem worthwhile.

Just a though, I don't haven't even heard any rumors to back this up
or anything, just sort of makes sense in my mind, MUCH more so than
trying to put out a P4 or Pentium-M based Celeron with no cache. The
P4-based chip with no cache would be an absolutely abysmal performer
(probably about on-par with a PII-233) and would still be a pretty
darn big die (probably 60M+ transistors). A Pentium-M based Celeron
with no cache would perform better but it would probably require a
fair bit of tweaking to manufacture the thing cheaply. A 90nm version
of the XBox chip, on the other hand, would be DIRT-CHEAP (less than
10M transistors and a die size probably down in the 20mm^2 range) and
could straddle two markets, giving it enough production to be
meaningful. They could probably also sell some of these chips as part
of their line of embedded Celeron processors as well.

 

[Tony Hill]

That kind of cut down system will be good enough for the internet. I'll tell
you that many people are interested in a cheap way of getting on the internet,
also here in the 'west'. Secondhand old computers might not be reliable,
depending on what life they've had and the documentation might be missing.
A new 40GB drive costs only £30, so why struggle with an old duff.

There is a HUGE market for secondhand computers in the US, that is for
sure. And you are quite right, people are buying them so that they
can get on the internet (or, more to the point, so that they can get
on to AOL).

The big downside to these systems, that most people don't realize, is
that they come with ZERO support. For most of us this may seem like a
non-issue, but for a new computer user this usually results in them
getting screwed over and having to pay WAY more than the cost of a new
computer just to get Windows and AOL installed and working on their
computer.


Essentially the hardware of a new computer is free these days, it's
software and support that people are paying for. You can buy a new
HPaq or Dell system for $400. Figure that $100 of that goes towards
software (WinXP Home + some cheap office type application) and almost
all of the rest goes towards paying for support and the people who put
these systems together and sell them. The actual amount that the big
OEMs pay for the hardware in these systems is VERY low, probably no
more than $200 for the hole system. That leaves VERY little that you
can shave off from any one component.

 

[Yousuf Khan]

Just a though, I don't haven't even heard any rumors to back this up
or anything, just sort of makes sense in my mind, MUCH more so than
trying to put out a P4 or Pentium-M based Celeron with no cache. The
P4-based chip with no cache would be an absolutely abysmal performer
(probably about on-par with a PII-233) and would still be a pretty
darn big die (probably 60M+ transistors). A Pentium-M based Celeron
with no cache would perform better but it would probably require a
fair bit of tweaking to manufacture the thing cheaply. A 90nm version
of the XBox chip, on the other hand, would be DIRT-CHEAP (less than
10M transistors and a die size probably down in the 20mm^2 range) and
could straddle two markets, giving it enough production to be
meaningful. They could probably also sell some of these chips as part
of their line of embedded Celeron processors as well.

I don't think Intel wants to spend money updating the manufacturing design
on a processor that is now two generations out of date. They took the P6
core from 250nm all of the way down to 130nm, I don't think they will take
it to 90nm.

Yousuf Khan

 

[Tony Hill]

I don't think Intel wants to spend money updating the manufacturing design
on a processor that is now two generations out of date. They took the P6
core from 250nm all of the way down to 130nm, I don't think they will take
it to 90nm.

Actually they started it way back on a 350nm core (or was it even
before that?). Normally I would guess that they wouldn't want to
spend the money on such an old core, but the XBox means that they are
selling enough of these chips that the cost savings of moving to 90nm
could easily be sufficient to offset the fixed cost of updating the
manufacturing. They are selling something like 10 million of the
things a year and will probably continue to do so next year as well.
It only takes a fairly small per-unit cost savings to cover the
expenses of moving to a new process, especially since they don't need
to worry about really tweaking it for maximum speed or anything (just
high yields).

 

[Yousuf Khan]

Actually they started it way back on a 350nm core (or was it even
before that?). Normally I would guess that they wouldn't want to
spend the money on such an old core, but the XBox means that they are
selling enough of these chips that the cost savings of moving to 90nm
could easily be sufficient to offset the fixed cost of updating the
manufacturing. They are selling something like 10 million of the
things a year and will probably continue to do so next year as well.
It only takes a fairly small per-unit cost savings to cover the
expenses of moving to a new process, especially since they don't need
to worry about really tweaking it for maximum speed or anything (just
high yields).

But remember, the Xbox business goes away within a couple of years, when it
becomes PowerPC based.

It makes much more sense that they would take one of their existing 90nm
chips (Prescott, or Dothan, etc.) and cut the L2 cache off of them. They
could initially start off selling full-sized Prescotts or Dothans rejects
and turn off their cache, and then later, they could actually manufacture
these chips without the caches in the first place.

Yousuf Khan

 

[Alex Johnson]

Well, because they mentioned that it was based on the "_older_

No, you didn't read it carefully enough. I said "the older _90nm_ Celerons
are P4-based". The emphasis on "90nm" there. Of course, the oldest Celerons
are P6-based (Pentium II generation specifically) and probably from the
250nm process, but that's irrelevant.

I see. You just weren't reading the original article correctly. I
forgive you.

Original quote: "older Celeron core using 90nm"
Your reading: "older (90nm Celeron core)"
Proper reading: "(older Celeron core) (using 90nm)"

Notice how you changed something old put on 90nm to something on 90nm
being called old? Nothing on 90nm can be considered old at this stage.
It's still so brand spanking new that it doesn't work right. If you
have to rearrage the words in the article to get your meaning, you are
forcing a meaning on them they don't have.

Alex

 

[Yousuf Khan]

Notice how you changed something old put on 90nm to something on 90nm
being called old? Nothing on 90nm can be considered old at this
stage. It's still so brand spanking new that it doesn't work right.
If you have to rearrage the words in the article to get your meaning,
you are forcing a meaning on them they don't have.

Well, the meaning I always got was "older 90nm" not "old and in 90nm". Wierd
semantics this English language can have. Anyways, "older 90nm" probably
means the first family of processors ported to 90nm which would be Prescott,
whereas Dothan was the second family ported to 90nm. Granted they only
followed each other by a couple of months, but still one is older and the
other is newer.

Yousuf Khan

 

[Felger Carbon]

Well, the meaning I always got was "older 90nm" not "old and in 90nm". Wierd
semantics this English language can have.

Yep. I read a coupla days ago about a "giant ant colony" in Oz. I
interpreted that as a colony of giant ants. Shades of 1950's Sci-Fi
films! Alas, what was meant was a giant colony of insects, where the
insects happened to be ants.

Do you Canuckistanians really speak English, eh? ;-)

 

[Nate Edel]

thread. For several generations now, since after the 486, it's been mostly
the size of the L2 that's driven most of the performance in chips.

No, since after the P6 and integrated caches, and to an extent only since
full-speed on-die L2 caches came in with the C/300A and the coppermine P3.

With the Pentium classic/MMX, the big difference for non-MMX code was that
the MMX had a 2x sized L1 cache (32kb vs 16kb IIRC), and it made a much more
significant difference than going from 256k to 512k or even 1mb of cache on
the motherboard or a COAST module.

The Celeron 300A outperformed the Pentium II 300mhz on some benchmarks,
though hardly all of them, despite a significantly smaller cache because of
the full core speed cache; the 256k cache at full core speed on the
coppermine P3s made them generally preferable to the 512k half core speed
cache on the first-generation P3s and 100mhz FSB P2s.

 

[Nate Edel]

Actually they started it way back on a 350nm core (or was it even
before that?).

Wow, you're right about the 350nm. They started (release-wise) on 250nm.
According to the Processor Spec Finder, all Pentium Pros were on 250nm.

http://processorfinder.intel.com/scripts/list.asp?ProcFam=50

....but the first generation Pentium IIs were on 350nm, even though in terms
of when they reached market, they were later.

http://processorfinder.intel.com/scripts/list.asp?ProcFam=47

 

[Tony Hill]

Wow, you're right about the 350nm. They started (release-wise) on 250nm.
According to the Processor Spec Finder, all Pentium Pros were on 250nm.

http://processorfinder.intel.com/scripts/list.asp?ProcFam=50

Huh? That ain't right. The Pentium Pros predate Intel's move to
250nm by some 3 or 4 years! According to Sandpile.org the first PPros
were actually produced on a 500nm fab process:

http://www.sandpile.org/impl/p6.htm

I think those were just the first handful of released chips (only
running at 150MHz) and the pre-release samples. Most PPros were built
on a 350nm fab process.

I can't find much info about them on Intel's site, I guess they're too
old to continue documenting.

...but the first generation Pentium IIs were on 350nm, even though in terms
of when they reached market, they were later.

http://processorfinder.intel.com/scripts/list.asp?ProcFam=47

The first PIIs definitely shipped on a 350nm process (though some
referred to it as a '280nm' process, I guess it was a sort of
in-between stage). They didn't start shipping desktop chips made on a
250nm process until '98 as I recall.

 

[Yousuf Khan]

Do you Canuckistanians really speak English, eh? ;-)

I think we speak a form of Joyal, or something like that.

Yousuf Khan

 

[KR Williams]

Yep. I read a coupla days ago about a "giant ant colony" in Oz. I
interpreted that as a colony of giant ants. Shades of 1950's Sci-Fi
films! Alas, what was meant was a giant colony of insects, where the
insects happened to be ants.

Do you Canuckistanians really speak English, eh? ;-)

Come on Felg, that would be Canuckistani's. At least you got the
'eh, right.

 

[Hank Oredson]

Come on Felg, that would be Canuckistani's. At least you got the
'eh, right.

Pretty sure the correct and proper usage is just "Canuks".

Maybe this is just a Minnesota term (where I first heard it)
for our friendly and hospitable neighbors to the north.

--

... Hank

http://horedson.home.att.net
http://w0rli.home.att.net