how is anandtech opinionated and not based on facts when their review has schematics of p-m's architecture... benchmark tests... and hands on analysis/review
"Banias' dedicated stack manager is another power saving tool integrated into the Banias architecture that is designed to manage stack pointers and other stack-related data. Remember that stacks are used to store information about the current state of the CPU including data that cannot be kept in registers due to limits in the number of available registers, thus a dedicated manager can help performance considerably. As usual, whenever efficiency is improved power consumption is optimized which is the case with Banias here as well."
"Despite having a 20 - 50% longer pipeline, Banias still maintains a significantly higher IPC than the Pentium III, which is not an insignificant achievement. Remember from our discussions about the Pentium 4 that IPC (Instructions executed Per Clock) is generally reduced by moving to a longer pipeline, but is made up for by the fact that longer pipeline architectures can reach higher clock speeds. With Banias, we have an architecture that already has a longer pipeline than the Pentium III, thus enabling higher clock speeds, all while boasting a higher IPC - you're in fact getting the best of both worlds with Banias"
"What's most impressive about Banias' caches is its 1MB on-die L2 cache. Not only did the Israel design team carefully design the transistors that make up the gates within the cache to maximize power savings, but they also changed the way data is actually accessed within the cache. Banias employs an 8-way set associative L2 cache, and normally in such a cache when one of the "ways" is selected, the entire block is selected. With Banias, each "way" is further split into quadrants so that when one is selected, a separate multiplexer selects which quadrant the necessary data is located in and only activates that part of the cache. The end result is that much less of the power hungry L2 cache is consuming battery life, which helps extend that battery life significantly. "
"In order to feed the higher IPC execution core, Intel outfitted the Banias with a 64-bit 100MHz quad-pumped FSB, identical in design to the Pentium 4's FSB. The Banias' FSB is even electrically compatible to the Pentium 4's FSB, which is why any Pentium 4 chipset is able to interface with the chip as we saw at IDF with this E7501/Banias setup"
"If you're picking up on the fact that Banias is significantly different from the Pentium III, then you're on the right track…"
this article was written 13 months ago and anandtech was one of the first to get their hands on the p-m b4 anyone else...
