Intel wins race to 90 nanometers with Prescott
InfoWorld | at | by Mike
Intel released the first major revision to the Pentium 4 processor in two years with the introduction of four new processors based on its 90 nanometer Prescott core Sunday. The chips are also Intel's first 90 nanometer products to hit the market. One of the benefits of shrinking chip manufacturing technologies is the ability to put more transistors on a smaller chip, and Intel was able to more than double the amount of transistors from the current Northwood Pentium 4 core, said Tim Thraves, desktop marketing manager for Intel.
The new processors arrived at 3.4GHz, 3.2GHz, 3GHz, and 2.8GHz, speeds that overlap current Pentium 4 processors. If two chips with different cores are available at the same clock speed, the Prescott chip will be known as the 3.4E GHz Pentium 4, while a Northwood chip with an 800MHz system bus gets the 3.4C GHz brand, Thraves said.