Product Performance
The Pentium 4 processor delivers the next generation of performance where end-users can experience and appreciate the performance most. For the spectrum of processor performance, please visit the Intel® Processor Performance Web Site at http://www.intel.com/performance/.

Product Highlights

• The new Pentium 4 processors 2.40C, 2.60C, 2.80C and 3 GHz with an advanced 800 MHz system bus and the 3.06GHz with 533 MHz system bus Pentium 4 processor support Hyper-Threading Technology
• 800 MHz system bus available with speeds at 2.40C, 2.60C, 2.80C and 3 GHz; 533 MHz system bus available with speeds at 2.26, 2.40B, 2.53, 2.66, 2.80 and 3.06 GHz; and 400 MHz system bus available with speeds at 2A, 2.20, 2.40, 2.50 and 2.60 GHz.
• 512-KB L2 Advanced Transfer Cache available with speeds from 2A GHz to 3.06 GHz, including the new 2.40C, 2.60C, 2.80C and 3 GHz with an advanced 800 MHz system bus.
• The Pentium 4 processor is available in the mPGA-478 form factor.
• Featuring the Intel NetBurst microarchitecture
• Pentium 4 processor supported by the Intel® 850, Intel® 845, Intel® 875P and Intel® 865 chipset families
• Pentium 4 processor supporting Hyper-Threading Technology supported by the Intel® 850E, 845GE, 845PE, 845GV, 845G⁽²⁾, 845E, 875P, 865G, 865PE and 865P chipsets
• Compatible with existing Intel® Architecture-based software
• Streaming SIMD Extensions 2 (SSE2) Instructions
• Intel® MMX™ media enhancement technology
• Integrated caches include 12-K micro-op trace cache and 8-KB L1 data cache in addition to L2 cache memory.
• Support for uni-processor designs
• Based upon Intel's leading 0.13 micron manufacturing process technologies

Intel’s Most Advanced, Most Powerful Processor for Desktop PCs and Entry Level Workstations
The Pentium 4 processor at 2A, 2.20, 2.26, 2.40, 2.40B, 2.50, 2.53, 2.60, 2.66, 2.80, 3.06 GHz; and the new 2.40C, 2.60C, 2.80C and 3 GHz with an advanced 800 MHz system bus are designed for desktop PCs, as well as for entry-level workstations. The processor is binary-compatible with previous generation Intel Architecture processors.

Intel® NetBurst™ Microarchitecture
Intel NetBurst microarchitecture delivers a number of innovative features including Hyper-Threading Technology, hyper-pipelined technology, 800 MHz, 533 MHz or 400 MHz system bus, Execution Trace Cache, and Rapid Execution Engine, as well as a number of enhanced features such as Advanced Transfer Cache, Advanced Dynamic Execution, enhanced floating-point and multimedia unit, and Streaming SIMD Extensions 2 (SSE2). Many of these innovations and advances were made possible with improvements in processor technology, process technology, and circuit design and could not previously be implemented in high-volume, manufacturable solutions. The features and resulting benefits of the microarchitecture are defined below.

Hyper-Threading Technology¹
Hyper-Threading Technology (HT Technology) is ground breaking technology from Intel that changes the landscape of processor design by going beyond GHz to improve processor performance. It allows software programs to "see" two processors and work more efficiently. This new technology enables the processor to execute two series, or threads, of instructions at the same time, thereby improving performance and system responsiveness. The Pentium 4 processor supporting Hyper-Threading Technology¹ is specially designed to deliver immediate increases on performance and system responsiveness with existing applications in multitasking environments (that is, where two or more things are running at the same time) and with many stand-alone applications today. Furthermore, the Pentium 4 processor supporting HT Technology provides performance headroom for the future.

 

Hyper-Pipelined Technology
The hyper-pipelined technology of the Intel NetBurst microarchitecture doubles the pipeline depth compared to the P6 microarchitecture used on previous processors such as the Intel® Pentium® III processor. One of the key pipelines, the branch prediction/recovery pipeline, is implemented in 20 stages in the Intel NetBurst microarchitecture, compared to 10 stages in the P6 microarchitecture. This technology significantly increases the performance, frequency, and scalability of the processor.

800 MHz, 533 MHz or 400 MHz System Bus
The Pentium 4 processor's 800 MHz system bus supports Intel's highest-performance desktop processor by delivering 6.4 GB of data-per-second into and out of the processor. This is accomplished through a physical signaling scheme of quad pumping the data transfers over a 200 MHz clocked system bus and a buffering scheme allowing for sustained 800 MHz data transfers. The Pentium 4 processor's 533 MHz system bus supports Intel's performance desktop processor by delivering 4.2 GB of data-per-second into and out of the processor. This is accomplished through a physical signaling scheme of quad pumping the data transfers over a 133 MHz clocked system bus and a buffering scheme allowing for sustained 533 MHz data transfers. The Pentium 4 processor's 400 MHz system bus supports Intel's performance desktop processor by delivering 3.2 GB of data-per-second into and out of the processor. This is accomplished through a physical signaling scheme of quad pumping the data transfers over a 100 MHz clocked system bus and a buffering scheme allowing for sustained 400 MHz data transfers. This compares to 1.06 GB/s delivered on the Pentium III processor's 133 MHz system bus.

Level 1 Execution Trace Cache
In addition to the 8-KB data cache, the Pentium 4 processor includes an Execution Trace Cache that stores up to 12-K decoded micro-ops in the order of program execution. This increases performance by removing the decoder from the main execution loop and makes more efficient usage of the cache storage space since instructions that are branched around are not stored. The result is a means to deliver a high volume of instructions to the processor's execution units and a reduction in the overall time required to recover from branches that have been mis-predicted.

Rapid Execution Engine
Two Arithmetic Logic Units (ALUs) on the Pentium 4 processor are clocked at twice the core processor frequency. This allows basic integer instructions such as Add, Subtract, Logical AND, Logical OR, etc. to execute in one-half a clock cycle. For example, the Rapid Execution Engine on a 3.06 GHz Pentium 4 processor runs at 6.12 GHz.

512-KB Level 2 Advanced Transfer Cache
512-KB L2 Advanced Transfer Cache (ATC) is available with speeds 2A, 2.20, 2.26, 2.40, 2.50, 2.53, 2.60, 2.66, 2.80, 3.06 GHz and the new 2.40C, 2.60C, 2.80C and 3 GHz with an advanced 800 MHz system bus. The Level 2 ATC delivers a much higher data throughput channel between the Level 2 cache and the processor core. The Advanced Transfer Cache consists of a 256-bit (32-byte) interface that transfers data on each core clock. As a result, the Pentium 4 processor at 3.06 GHz can deliver a data transfer rate of 98 GB/s. This compares to a transfer rate of 16 GB/s on the Pentium III processor at 1 GHz. Features of the ATC include:

• Non-Blocking, full speed, on-die level 2 cache
• 8-way set associativity
• 256-bit data bus to the level 2 cache
• Data clocked into and out of the cache every clock cycle

Advanced Dynamic Execution
The Advance Dynamic Execution engine is a very deep, out-of-order speculative execution engine that keeps the execution units executing instructions. The Pentium 4 processor can also view 126 instructions in flight and handle up to 48 loads and 24 stores in the pipeline. It also includes an enhanced branch prediction algorithm that has the net effect of reducing the number of branch mis-predictions by about 33% over the P6 generation processor's branch prediction capability. It does this by implementing a 4-KB branch target buffer that stores more detail on the history of past branches, as well as by implementing a more advanced branch prediction algorithm.

Enhanced Floating-Point and Multimedia Unit
The Pentium 4 processor expands the floating-point registers to a full 128-bit and adds an additional register for data movement which improves performance on both floating-point and multimedia applications.

Streaming SIMD Extensions 2 (SSE2) Instructions
With the introduction of SSE2, the Intel NetBurst microarchitecture now extends the SIMD capabilities that MMX technology and SSE technology delivered by adding 144 instructions. These instructions include 128-bit SIMD integer arithmetic and 128-bit SIMD double-precision floating-point operations. These instructions reduce the overall number of instructions required to execute a particular program task and as a result can contribute to an overall performance increase. They accelerate a broad range of applications, including video, speech, and image, photo processing, encryption, financial, engineering and scientific applications.

Data Prefetch Logic
Functionality that anticipates the data needed by an application and pre-loads it into the Advanced Transfer Cache, further increasing processor and application performance.

Features Used for Testing and Performance/Thermal Monitoring
 

• Built-in Self Test (BIST) provides single stuck-at fault coverage of the microcode and large logic arrays, as well as testing of the instruction cache, data cache, Translation Lookaside Buffers (TLBs), and ROMs.
• IEEE 1149.1 Standard Test Access Port and Boundary Scan mechanism enables testing of the Pentium 4 processor and system connections through a standard interface.
• Internal performance counters for performance monitoring and event counting.
• Includes a Thermal Monitor feature that allows motherboards to be cost effective.