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Pentium III (E & EB) "Coppermine"After what seems endless delays, October 25 1999 saw the launch of Intel's latest revision of it's successful P6 line of processors, the Pentium III E and EB. Known internally (and across the internet hardware community) as "Coppermine", the Pentium III E & EB feature a whole host of improvements including a 0.18 micron core, 256 Kb on-chip Level 2 cache, 133 MHz Front Side Bus support and Intel's SSE instructions. All these improvements make the Coppermine quite a different beast from it's Katmai based predecessors and offer a number of performance enhancements over existing Pentium III (Katmai) processors. This review hopes to examine these enhancements to Intel's P6 core and compare this newcomer to existing Intel processors and of course AMD's Athlon. 0.18 micron manufacturing processOne of the major features that Intel is introducing to the desktop processor is the 0.18 μm manufacturing process. This process is replacing the current 0.25 μm process which existing Pentium III processors are manufactured. This brings a number of benefits to the "Coppermine" processor. The first main benefit that the 0.18 μm process brings is a reduction in the processor die. The "Coppermine" core is now only 106 mm² compared to 128 mm² of the 0.25 μm Katmai core. This is even more remarkable when you consider that the "Coppermine" contains over 28 million transistors compared to the 9 million transistors of the Katmai core. This reduced size of the processor die allows Intel to produce more processors per silicon wafer, thus meaning that production costs should go down (don't read this as lower sale price though!). The reduction in size of the processor die means that "Coppermine" can run on a core voltage in the range of 1.1 to 1.7v. Most will be set to run at a voltage of 1.6v. This reduction in voltage is very important as it has a direct effect upon the heat output of the processor. The rule of thumb is that lower the voltage will produce less heat at higher clock speeds. The 1.6v core voltage of the Coppermine will mean that it can run at speeds well in excess of 600 MHz without causing too much heat output. The smaller die size will enable Intel to produce the Pentium III at speeds higher than 600 MHz and possibly in excess of 1 GHz (1000 MHz). We can contrast the new "Coppermine" with the older "Katmai" to illustrate this point. The 0.25 μm "Katmai" ran with a core voltage of 2.0v and generated a significant amount of heat with speeds in excess of 500 MHz. The 600 MHz "Katmai" processor had a number of stability problems when it was launched in August of 1999. Intel had difficulty in producing the "Katmai" at speeds over 600 MHz and many chips at this speed needed a higher voltage (2.05v) in order to run properly. In contrast to the "Katmai", the "Coppermine" is well able to run at speeds faster than 600 MHz due to it's reduced die size. The heat output of the "Coppermine" is much less than that of the "Katmai" and is able to run at 733 MHz at it's launch. The reduced running temperature and smaller die size of the "Coppermine" also help it become an ideal candidate for mobile processing. Thus we see at the time of launch, a range of mobile "Coppermine" processors being launched onto the mobile market at speeds up to 500 MHz.
Other enhancements to the "Coppermine" include 256 Kb of full speed integrated level 2 cache. To see what effect this has, read on...
Other Intel Processors at:
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