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Pentium III
The Pentium III (marketed as Intel Pentium III Processor, informally PIII or P3) brand refers to Intel's 32-bit x86 desktop and mobile CPUs based on the sixth-generation P6 microarchitecture introduced on February 28, 1999.[citation needed] The brand's initial processors were very similar to the earlier Pentium II-branded processors. The most notable differences were the addition of the Streaming SIMD Extensions (SSE) instruction set (to accelerate floating point and parallel calculations), and the introduction of a controversial serial number embedded in the chip during manufacturing.
Even after the release of the Pentium 4 in late 2000, the Pentium III continued to be produced with new models introduced up until early 2003. They were then discontinued in April 2004 for desktop units and May 2007 for mobile units. They were leaving of support and removed from the official price lists in July 2009.
Similarly to the Pentium II it superseded, the Pentium III was also accompanied by the Celeron brand for lower-end versions, and the Xeon for high-end (server and workstation) derivatives. The Pentium III was eventually superseded by the Pentium 4, but its Tualatin core also served as the basis for the Pentium M CPUs, which used many ideas from the P6 microarchitecture. Subsequently, it was the Pentium M microarchitecture of Pentium M branded CPUs, and not the NetBurst found in Pentium 4 processors, that formed the basis for Intel's energy-efficient Core microarchitecture of CPUs branded Core 2, Pentium Dual-Core, Celeron (Core), and Xeon.
The first Pentium III variant was the Katmai (Intel product code 80525). It was a further development of the Deschutes Pentium II. The Pentium III saw an increase of 2 million transistors over the Pentium II. The differences were the addition of execution units and SSE instruction support, and an improved L1 cache controller[citation needed] (the L2 cache controller was left unchanged, as it would be fully redesigned for Coppermine anyway), which were responsible for the minor performance improvements over the "Deschutes" Pentium IIs. It was first released at speeds of 450 and 500 MHz on February 28, 1999. Two more versions were released: 550 MHz on May 17, 1999, and 600 MHz on August 2, 1999. On September 27, 1999, Intel released the 533B and 600B running at 533 & 600 MHz respectively. The 'B' suffix indicated that it featured a 133 MT/s FSB, instead of the 100 MT/s FSB of prior models.
The Katmai contains 9.5 million transistors, not including the 512 Kbytes L2 cache (which adds 25 million transistors), and has dimensions of 12.3 mm by 10.4 mm (128 mm2). It is fabricated in Intel's P856.5 process, a 250 nm complementary metal–oxide–semiconductor (CMOS) process with five levels of aluminum interconnect. The Katmai used the same slot-based design as the Pentium II but with the newer Slot 1 Single Edge Contact Cartridge (SECC) 2 that allowed direct CPU core contact with the heat sink. There have been some early models of the Pentium III with 450 and 500 MHz packaged in an older SECC cartridge intended for original equipment manufacturers (OEMs).
A notable stepping level for enthusiasts was SL35D. This version of Katmai was officially rated for 450 MHz, but often contained cache chips for the 600 MHz model and thus usually can run at 600 MHz.
The second version, codenamed Coppermine (Intel product code: 80526), was released on October 25, 1999, running at 500, 533, 550, 600, 650, 667, 700, and 733 MHz. From December 1999 to May 2000, Intel released Pentium IIIs running at speeds of 750, 800, 850, 866, 900, 933 and 1000 MHz (1 GHz). Both 100 MT/s FSB and 133 MT/s FSB models were made. For models that were already available with the same frequency, an "E" was appended to the model name to indicate cores using the new 180 nm fabrication process. An additional "B" was later appended to designate 133 MHz FSB models, resulting in an "EB" suffix. In overall performance, Coppermine had a small advantage over the Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) Athlons it was released against, which was reversed when AMD applied their own die shrink and added an on-die L2 cache to the Athlon. Athlon held the advantage in floating-point intensive code, while the Coppermine could perform better when SSE optimizations were used, but in practical terms there was little difference in how the two chips performed, clock-for-clock. However, AMD were able to clock the Athlon higher, reaching speeds of 1.2 GHz before the launch of the Pentium 4.
In performance, Coppermine arguably marked a bigger step than Katmai by introducing an on-chip L2 cache, which Intel names Advanced Transfer Cache (ATC). The ATC operates at the core clock rate and has a capacity of 256 KB, twice that of the on-chip cache formerly on Mendocino Celerons. It is eight-way set-associative and is accessed via a Double Quad Word Wide 256-bit bus, four times as wide as Katmai's. Further, latency was dropped to a quarter compared to Katmai. Another marketing term by Intel was Advanced System Buffering, which encompassed improvements to better take advantage of a 133 MT/s system bus. These include 6 fill buffers (vs. 4 on Katmai), 8 bus queue entries (vs. 4 on Katmai) and 4 write-back buffers (vs. 1 on Katmai). Under competitive pressure from the AMD Athlon, Intel reworked the internals, finally removing some well-known pipeline stalls.[citation needed] As a result, applications affected by the stalls ran faster on Coppermine by up to 30%.[citation needed] The Coppermine contained 29 million transistors and was fabricated in a 180 nm process.
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Pentium III AI simulator
(@Pentium III_simulator)
Pentium III
The Pentium III (marketed as Intel Pentium III Processor, informally PIII or P3) brand refers to Intel's 32-bit x86 desktop and mobile CPUs based on the sixth-generation P6 microarchitecture introduced on February 28, 1999.[citation needed] The brand's initial processors were very similar to the earlier Pentium II-branded processors. The most notable differences were the addition of the Streaming SIMD Extensions (SSE) instruction set (to accelerate floating point and parallel calculations), and the introduction of a controversial serial number embedded in the chip during manufacturing.
Even after the release of the Pentium 4 in late 2000, the Pentium III continued to be produced with new models introduced up until early 2003. They were then discontinued in April 2004 for desktop units and May 2007 for mobile units. They were leaving of support and removed from the official price lists in July 2009.
Similarly to the Pentium II it superseded, the Pentium III was also accompanied by the Celeron brand for lower-end versions, and the Xeon for high-end (server and workstation) derivatives. The Pentium III was eventually superseded by the Pentium 4, but its Tualatin core also served as the basis for the Pentium M CPUs, which used many ideas from the P6 microarchitecture. Subsequently, it was the Pentium M microarchitecture of Pentium M branded CPUs, and not the NetBurst found in Pentium 4 processors, that formed the basis for Intel's energy-efficient Core microarchitecture of CPUs branded Core 2, Pentium Dual-Core, Celeron (Core), and Xeon.
The first Pentium III variant was the Katmai (Intel product code 80525). It was a further development of the Deschutes Pentium II. The Pentium III saw an increase of 2 million transistors over the Pentium II. The differences were the addition of execution units and SSE instruction support, and an improved L1 cache controller[citation needed] (the L2 cache controller was left unchanged, as it would be fully redesigned for Coppermine anyway), which were responsible for the minor performance improvements over the "Deschutes" Pentium IIs. It was first released at speeds of 450 and 500 MHz on February 28, 1999. Two more versions were released: 550 MHz on May 17, 1999, and 600 MHz on August 2, 1999. On September 27, 1999, Intel released the 533B and 600B running at 533 & 600 MHz respectively. The 'B' suffix indicated that it featured a 133 MT/s FSB, instead of the 100 MT/s FSB of prior models.
The Katmai contains 9.5 million transistors, not including the 512 Kbytes L2 cache (which adds 25 million transistors), and has dimensions of 12.3 mm by 10.4 mm (128 mm2). It is fabricated in Intel's P856.5 process, a 250 nm complementary metal–oxide–semiconductor (CMOS) process with five levels of aluminum interconnect. The Katmai used the same slot-based design as the Pentium II but with the newer Slot 1 Single Edge Contact Cartridge (SECC) 2 that allowed direct CPU core contact with the heat sink. There have been some early models of the Pentium III with 450 and 500 MHz packaged in an older SECC cartridge intended for original equipment manufacturers (OEMs).
A notable stepping level for enthusiasts was SL35D. This version of Katmai was officially rated for 450 MHz, but often contained cache chips for the 600 MHz model and thus usually can run at 600 MHz.
The second version, codenamed Coppermine (Intel product code: 80526), was released on October 25, 1999, running at 500, 533, 550, 600, 650, 667, 700, and 733 MHz. From December 1999 to May 2000, Intel released Pentium IIIs running at speeds of 750, 800, 850, 866, 900, 933 and 1000 MHz (1 GHz). Both 100 MT/s FSB and 133 MT/s FSB models were made. For models that were already available with the same frequency, an "E" was appended to the model name to indicate cores using the new 180 nm fabrication process. An additional "B" was later appended to designate 133 MHz FSB models, resulting in an "EB" suffix. In overall performance, Coppermine had a small advantage over the Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) Athlons it was released against, which was reversed when AMD applied their own die shrink and added an on-die L2 cache to the Athlon. Athlon held the advantage in floating-point intensive code, while the Coppermine could perform better when SSE optimizations were used, but in practical terms there was little difference in how the two chips performed, clock-for-clock. However, AMD were able to clock the Athlon higher, reaching speeds of 1.2 GHz before the launch of the Pentium 4.
In performance, Coppermine arguably marked a bigger step than Katmai by introducing an on-chip L2 cache, which Intel names Advanced Transfer Cache (ATC). The ATC operates at the core clock rate and has a capacity of 256 KB, twice that of the on-chip cache formerly on Mendocino Celerons. It is eight-way set-associative and is accessed via a Double Quad Word Wide 256-bit bus, four times as wide as Katmai's. Further, latency was dropped to a quarter compared to Katmai. Another marketing term by Intel was Advanced System Buffering, which encompassed improvements to better take advantage of a 133 MT/s system bus. These include 6 fill buffers (vs. 4 on Katmai), 8 bus queue entries (vs. 4 on Katmai) and 4 write-back buffers (vs. 1 on Katmai). Under competitive pressure from the AMD Athlon, Intel reworked the internals, finally removing some well-known pipeline stalls.[citation needed] As a result, applications affected by the stalls ran faster on Coppermine by up to 30%.[citation needed] The Coppermine contained 29 million transistors and was fabricated in a 180 nm process.