Intel announced the launch of a new version of the Pentium 4 processor with an extra dose of cache on Tuesday, in a move that seems calculated to undercut the launch of the Athlon64 from Advanced Micro Devices next week.

The Pentium 4 Extreme Edition will run at 3.2GHz and come with 2MB of level-three cache, said Louis Burns, executive vice president of the desktop platform group at Intel. Current Pentium 4 chips come with a 512KB secondary cache and no level-three cache. Increasing caches, which are reservoirs of memory located on the processor, typically boost performance.

Computer makers will begin to sell PCs with the chip in the next 30 to 60 days, Burns said.

"The performance boost is awesome," Burns said on Tuesday during a speech at the Intel Developer Forum here.

Intel was able to beef up the caches quickly because the new Pentium 4 is actually the same basic chip as the Xeon MP with 2MB of level-three cache, which is a chip for multiprocessor servers that has been on the market for months. The new Pentium 4 comes in a different package and runs at a faster speed, but the two chips are essentially the same, an Intel spokesman said.

"It is a Xeon with a different pin-out, or least that's what it looks like to me," said Nathan Brookwood, an analyst at Insight 64.

Brookwood, among others, noted that the chip comes out only days before AMD releases the Athlon64 on 23 September. The Athlon64 comes with an integrated memory controller and is expected to rival the Pentium 4 in performance and pass the chip in certain benchmarks. The additional cache gives Intel an extra layer of insurance in the performance contest between the two companies.

The Intel spokesman added that the chip was put on the company's product lineup only recently

By: DocMemory
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