Intel prepares to can Pentium 4

IN RETROSPECT, this last IDF played down a lot of things, one of the biggest ones being the Pentium 4. Anything based on the core was played down, all the talk was of the Itanium and Pentium M based devices. In the mobile space, the P-M is the only thing that matters, and Intel is right there. In the server space, all the talk was on Itanium, and this 64 bit Xeon was something barely mentioned in passing. Luckily, fate will make the Xeon go away, or at least it will merge with the P-M product lines. The next big mobile core is called Merom, and it is not just a tweaked and re-tweaked Banias, it is a completely new core, PM2 for lack of a better way of putting it. Look for big advances there.

Now, the big news that they are not telling you is that there will be a desktop version of this chip, with all the features one would expect out of a desktop chip. Merom is expected to have large changes to it to make it top the last core by 20-30% clock for clock, basically pummel it senseless. When you pull out the power savings bits, and tweak for speed, not watts, you get more, well, speed.

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