Student Version L E S S O N
P L A N #9
CLASS: Computer Repair, Maintenance, Upgrade and Management
TOPIC: Microprocessor
DATE: Thursday September 23rd 2010
AIM: What were the features of the AMD processors?
H.W. # 9:
1) What was an improvement of the Pentium 4 over the Pentium III?
2) What is Hyper-Threading technology?
3) Instead of MHz, how did AMD start designating their CPU performance?
4) What are some capabilities of the Xeon processor that gear it towards the server units
DO NOW: Do research to find out the name of the Athlon that was the first major improvement to the
classic Athlon:
Thunderbird
PROCEDURE:
Write the AIM and DO NOW.
Get students working!
Take attendance.
Go Over HW
Collect HW#
Go over the Do Now
Assignment #1: So we have seen the features of the Pentium III. Now let’s move on to the next generation
of Intel processors, namely the Pentium 4. Go to www.techweb.com/encyclopedia. Look up Pentium 4.
Focus on and answer the following questions.
1) What FSB speed did the Pentium 4 start out with?
100MHz quad pumped for a total of 400 MHz
2) The first Pentium 4 supported only what type of RAM?
RDRAM
3) What type of RAM did the Pentium 4 subsequently support?
SDRAM
4) How many pins were on the first Pentium 4 PGA package?
423
5) How many pins and what type of package did subsequent Pentium 4 chips have?
478
Assignment #2: In certain Pentium 4 CPU’s there was a technology that increased performance by 30%. To
find out about this technology, look up Hyper-Threading at www.techweb.com/encyclopedia. What is
Hyper-Threading?
A feature of certain Pentium 4 chips that makes one physical CPU appear as two logical CPUs. It uses additional
registers to overlap two instruction streams in order to achieve an approximate 30% gain in performance.
Multithreaded applications take advantage of the Hyper-Threaded hardware as they would on any dual-processor
system; however, the performance gain cannot equal that of true dual-processor CPUs.
Assignment #3: When Intel introduced its Pentium 4, AMD released an upgraded version of the Athlon
Thunderbird. To find out more about this new AMD CPU, go to www.techweb.com/encyclopedia and look
up Athlon XP and answer the following questions:
1) When was the Athlon XP introduced?
2001
2) Instead of a Megahertz designation, how did AMD designate these CPUs?
Performance Rating
Assignment #4: Just as the Celeron describes a series of lower-end processors built around the Pentium II,
Pentium III, and Pentium 4, there was another series of high-end processors built around the Pentium II,
Pentium III, and Pentium 4. To find out about this series of high-end processors, look up Xeon at
www.techweb.com/encyclopedia and at www.pcwebopedia.com and answer the following questions:
1) What kind of computers were the Xeon processors designed to be used in?
Servers
3) What type of slot did Pentium II and Pentium III Xeon chips connect to?
Slot 2
Some other notes on the Xeon processors:
A) Xeon processors add massive amounts of L2 caches
B) Xeon processors were designed to work in multiprocessor systems, like high end servers. For example
take a look at this URL: http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/itemdetails.asp?EdpNo=5353322&CatId=2683. What type and how many processors does this server support?
2
3) The Pentium 4 Xeon came in two varieties; Pentium 4 Xeon and Pentium 4 Xeon MP. Although the
Pentium 4 supports multiple processors, the Pentium 4 Xeon is specifically designed to handle many
processors. Also, the Pentium 4 Xeon went back to the PGA style package instead of the SEC package that
the Pentium II Xeon and Pentium III Xeon used (to connect to slot 2).
The time has come for the address bus size to increase from 32 bits, which allowed for 4GB of RAM to be
addressed, theoretically. The new address bus sized that has come out is 64 bits allowing for a theoretical
maximum amount of RAM
of GB of RAM
2^64 bytes
Assignment #5: Research the following 64-bit address bus processors and write short summaries on each.
A) Itanium The CPU family from Intel that is based on its next-generation, 64-bit IA-64 architecture. The operating
systems that are available for Itanium computers are Windows Server 2003, HP-UX and Linux.
Itaniums run IA-64 applications in the CPU's native mode, and they run IA-32 (x86) and HP PA-RISC
applications in an emulation mode. IA-32 programs are executed directly in the Itanium's hardware
layer or via a software layer in the operating system (see IA-32 Execution Layer). HP PA-RISC
applications are run via a software translator (see Aries).
Following are the various Itanium models that have been released along with their code names (in
parentheses) as well as models expected in the future. See IA-64 for more on the Itanium architecture.
First Itanium (Merced)
The first Itanium chips were introduced in 2001 with a clock speed of 733 MHz and a 180 nanometer
process technology. L3 cache sizes were up to 4MB.
Itanium 2 (McKinley, Madison, Deerfield, Fanwood)
Starting in 2002, the Itanium 2 line was released with clock speeds starting at 900 MHz and increasing
to 1.7 GHz. Memory bandwidth was increased from the first Itanium's 2.1 Gbps to 6.4 Gbps. Starting
with the Madison chips in 2003, the process technology was reduced to 130 nanometers. L3 cache sizes
reached 9MB.
Dual Core Itanium 2 (Montecito, Millington)
In 2006, the third generation Itanium models were introduced with dual cores, up to 24MB L3 cache
and 1.7 billion transistors.
Itanium 3? (Tukwila, Poulson, Kittson)
Quad-core Itaniums, code named Tukwila, are expected in 2009 with a process technology of 65 nm.
Poulson and Kittson are future chips with more cores.
B) Opteron –
A family of 64-bit CPU chips from AMD, formerly code named Sledgehammer (part of the Hammer
line). Introduced in April 2003, the Opteron fully supports 32-bit applications, but requires that
programs be optimized and recompiled to take full advantage of the 64 bits. The 64-bit version of
Windows XP also takes advantage of the increased CPU word size. Intended for servers and high-end
workstations, the Opteron competes with Intel's Xeon and Itanium lines. AMD subsequently introduced
64-bit Athlon CPUs (see Athlon).
Multicore Opterons
In 2005, following the introduction of its Athlon dual-core chips, AMD introduced dual-core Opterons
with quad-core compatibility (dual cores could be replaced with quad-core chips on the same
motherboard). In 2007, it introduced the Quad-Core AMD Opteron processor (code named Barcelona).
Questions: Use your research skills to answer the following questions. Some have been answered from past
lessons. Some questions are new.
1) A Pentium III processor has 32K of Level 1 cache, whereas the Athlon has 128K of Level 1 cache.
What does the cache provide for the processors? Often used information
2) What type of connector the Pentium II use to attach to the motherboard? Slot 1
3) What is a L2 cache size for a Pentium II processor? 512
4) If your Pentium III has a CPU speed of 850 MHz and a motherboard speed of 100 MHz, what is the
clock multiplier? 8.5
5) What are differences between a Pentium and a Pentium II? Faster, bigger cache, different package
6) What motherboard socket type is used on the Pentium IV chip? PGA
7) What motherboard socket type is used with the AMD Athlon XP? Socket A
8) Which processors can access as much as 4GB or RAM (you can state a range)? From 386 to the
present
9) Which processor package type is the same as the SECC, but without the plastic covering? SEPP
10) What was the first processor to use Socket A? AMD Athlon
11) How many transistors does the Pentium 4 have? 42 Million
12) When is it appropriate to have a Slot 1 on a system board? To connect to a Pentium II
13) What characteristic(s) of the system-board architecture determine the amount of memory that a CPU
can address? Address Bus
14) What was the first Intel CPU to contain internal cache? 486
15) When is it appropriate to use a Celeron rather than a Pentium II in a computer system? It doesn’t
really matter
16) Which is more powerful, the Celeron or the Xeon processor? Xeon
17) Compare and contrast RISC and CISC technology. Reduced Instructions Set Computer is a processor
that does not include many instructions that a processor will never use making the processor faster.
A Complex Instruction Set Computer is a processor that includes many instructions that a processor
will never use making the processor slower.
18) What is the name for the bus that connects L2 cache to the CPU inside the Pentium II processor
housing? Backside bus or Internal Data bus