The year 2003 in processor form

By Alun Williams

Posted on 23 Dec 2003 at 17:08

Its been a big year for processors and, interestingly, in areas outside the traditional desktop space. The year began with Centrino, Intel's ground up redesign of mobile processing and finished with Athlon64, AMD's number crunching, x86-based, 64-bit processor. And both Intel and AMD debuted new 64-bit server offerings - the Opteron from AMD, and the second-gen Intel Itanium.

At the very beginning of the year, just to remind ourselves, Intel started 2003 with a 3.06GHz, 512KB of cache top-of-the-range Pentium 4 (costing $637), a 2.20GHz, 128KB of cache Celeron (costing $103), and a 2.2GHz, 512KB of cache mobile Pentium 4 processor. AMD, for the record, started with 2003 with a top-of-the-range Athlon XP 2800+ (running at 2.25GHz) a 2000+ mobile XP processor (clocking 1.67GHz) and the Duron range was still in place, too, lead by a 1.3GHz model...

January

So, in the year that saw the birth of Centrino, it was early in January that Intel unwrapped the new name for its wireless technologies (the brand including a microprocessor code-named 'Banias', related chipsets and an 802.11b wireless networking capability). And the start of what would be a profitable year for Intel was marked with a doubling of profits and six new Mobile Pentium 4 processors, including a new top-of the range 2.4GHz model.

February

AMD meanwhile, had 64-bit news in February - AMD names the days, delays the Clawhammer. It announced that the 64-bit Opteron processor aimed at the server and workstation markets would be launched on 2 April. However, the Athlon 64 processor - formerly known as 'Clawhammer' - for the desktop and mobile markets was pushed back to September. Originally the launch was slated for the first half of this year.

Later in the month, AMD boosted its Athlon XP processor with the Barton core, the Athlon XP 3000+ being the first beneficiary. The main benefit of the Barton is the doubling of Level 2 cache - from 256Kb to 512Kb - for improved performance. It also has 128K L1 cache - 64Kb instruction and 64Kb data cache - making for a total of 640Kb on-chip cache.

The main news from Intel in February emerged at the Spring IDF in San Jose. Among the news we reported was the Pentium-based vision of the 'Digital Home', more launch details of the Centrino, and the unveiling of the 90nm-based Prescott processor.

March

Interesting news in March included Intel opening its research labs in Cambridge University, and the release of three new Intel processors for PDAs. These included the The PXA263, Intel's first 'stacked' processor for PDAs, bringing memory and processor chips together in a smaller package.

The big news in March however was the official launch of Centrino - see Intel Centrino mobile technology for our full report on the new technology. AMD, meanwhile, bravely fought for limelight by also launching 12 new mobile processors.

April

In April, Intel took time out to form the Trusted Computing Group along with IBM and Microsoft and also beefed up the P4 bus. Bringing Hyper Threading to the masses, the 3GHz chip, with the HT letters after its name, also had a faster system bus - 800MHz over the previous 533MHz - and Intel is claiming a 50 per cent increase in performance. Along with the 3GHz processor, Intel also announced the 875P chipset, formerly codenamed Canterwood, with support for dual-channel DDR400 MHz system memory.