Apr. '00 Headlines

Consumers have been waiting patiently over the years for the unthinkable product-- a CPU capable of performing 1,000,000,000 clock cycles per second. For the lay persons, this is the 1 GHz processor: the newest standard in modern computing. AMD and Intel both introduced their gigahertz CPUs approximately 3 months ahead of schedule. The fierce competition between these giants have escalated processor roadmaps, leaving the consumer the winner in the Silicon Valley rivalry for dominance.

Both the AMD Athlon and the Intel Pentium III now sport the GHz speed crown. But in reality, which one is superior in terms of performance? Which CPU has the upper hand in technological innovation?

For the time being, Intel has this crown in raw performance. When compared to the Athlon, the Pentium III boasts a 256 KB full-speed Level 2 cache; the Athlon sports an external 512KB cache running at 1/3 the speed of the processor. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure this out, but a 256K L2 cache running at 1000 MHz will always have a performance advantage over a 512K L2 cache running at a piddly 333 MHz. Size doesn't always beat speed, because the rate at which an execution is done is what really counts. To prove this fact, let's take this situation for example. A 150-pound college kid can do 15 jumping-jacks in 17 seconds flat. Meanwhile his portly 300-pound roommate can do 20 jumping-jacks in 35 seconds. Although the fat man did more jumping jacks (with more time allotted), his rate of 1 jumping-jack every 1.75 seconds is less efficient than the thin man's rate of 1 jumping-jack every 1.13 seconds.

Basically, L2 cache efficiency is what helps improve the overall performance of a PC. Data that is stored in the Level 2 Cache will travel to the processor's execution unit at a much quicker pace-- as opposed to the other data that will run to the execution unit at the RAM's transfer speed of 100/133 MHz. So it's easy to understand that data transferred to the CPU will be more efficient with the PIII's 1000 MHz rate than the Athlon's 333 MHz counterpart.

When speaking of technological innovation, however, the Athlon processor does carry a more advanced design. The K7 core was just released last summer, and its potential hasn't nearly been tapped yet. With future capabilities of 400 MHz Bus rates, the Athlon has plenty of headroom for the future. Also, the Athlon is based on the EV6 core of the Digital Alpha, whose CPU design made headlines back in the latter portion of the 1990s. And with the "Sharptooth" Athlons coming out soon (which will sport a full-speed L2 cache), performance will greatly improve as the design goes mainstream.

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