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The Prescott, now dubbed the Pentium 4E, includes a doubling of the L2 cache to 1MB, a doubling of the L1 data cache to 16KB and 13 new operating instructions relating to hyper-threading technology, with the SSE (streaming SIMD extensions) moving up to version 3. The new processor is drop-in compatible with existing 478-pin formats.

The new instructions, which operate on multiple elements of data at the same time, cover such areas as floating point to integer conversion, video encoding and generally improving responsiveness for gaming and multimedia support.

As for clock rates, the new processors (which are based on a smaller scale 90 nanometre manufacturing process) run at speeds of 3.4, 3.2, 3.0 and 2.8GHz.

Intel's Technical Marketing Engineer, Mike Bond, told us that the company anticipates that Prescott will reach speeds of 4GHz by the end of the year. 'This new manufacturing technology, along with numerous architectural enhancements, enable us to continue delivering products that allow end users to interact with a wide variety of digital devices,' said Bill Siu, general manager,

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Intel Desktop Platforms Group. 'These processors provide improved responsiveness for today's corporate and home applications, and offer headroom for the next wave of technologies.'

The EE special edition Pentium 4 - which was launched at the Fall IDF and aimed at gamers - was dubbed the 'Extreme Edition'. For the new Prescott-based processors, however, an 'E' is simply used to designate the new processors at the part number level. The 'E' doesn't stand for any particular word.

For home entertainment PCs or multimedia content serving, there are two basic approaches. One is the Microsoft Media Centre, where the PC moves into the realm of consumer electronics. The other model is that a high performance PC which streams multimedia content.

The latter model is the one the Prescott best addresses. With the emphasis on hyper threading - the simultaneous performance of multiple tasks - the PC remains responsive to the user whilst simultaneously serving media streams or broadband Internet connectivity.

The pricing for the new processors matches that of the equivalent 'Northwood' core models: the 3.4E GHz is $417, the 3.2E GHz is $278, the 3.0E GHz is $218 and the 2.8E GHz is $178. A fifth new processor, the 2.8A GHz, which has a 533MHz system bus as opposed to its 800MHz companions, is priced at $163.

All prices are based on 1,000 unit direct orders.

In terms of availability, Intel has been shipping 'hundreds of thousands' of Prescotts since the end of last year, Mike Bond told us, and expects the new processor to account for 50 per cent of all shipments by the end of Q2.

See also:

Inside Prescott