Dothan Over Netburst: Is The Pentium 4 A Dead End?

Even more interesting is the fact that Intel never really killed off the Pentium III. Large parts of the highly effective and much less power hungry architecture found its way into the very popular Pentium M notebook processor. Indeed, when analyzing the architecture of the Pentium M, it becomes clear that it is much more similar to the Pentium III than the Pentium 4!

As a result of the miniaturization process from 180 nanometers (problem child Pentium III 1.13 GHz) to 90 nanometers (today's Pentium M Dothan) and the optimizations subsequently made to the die and the silicon itself, the Pentium M now proves to be the better processor overall. The processor generates far less heat and can process more instructions per clock cycle, making it much more efficient.........................

However, very recently, Intel publicly confirmed it was about to make a move away from the Netburst architecture of the Pentium 4 - it seems the company is aware of the P4's crumbling acceptance. We can only hope that Intel will bring us more sensible products in the future.

Meanwhile, AMD should begin preparing a suitable answer to Intel's upcoming accelerated 65 nm dual-core processor, code named "Conroe." Care to guess upon which architecture this design will be based?