Pentium 4 Extreme Edition

[Moridin]

Originally posted by JabberJaw
From the Inq, quoting an Intel spokesman, "The chip will be produced using .13µ technology but will later move to a 90 nanometer process."

Moridin, I wonder if this would be a natural byproduct of moving Xeon to 90 nano, or whether Intel is planning to hedge their bet against a delayed Prescott introduction (due to power consumption/heat dissipation issues reported by OEM system developers)?

The Xeon MP is currently .13 and will be moved to .09u. It is also available with the identical 512KB L2, 2MB L3. AFAICT this chip IS a Xeon MP with a 800 MHz FSB rather then a 533 MHz FSB.

[Moridin]

Originally posted by irwincur
This is where you are slightly wrong. Technically it will cost them R&D and it could cost them a lot. How you say? If they release a chip that canabalizes Prescott sales they will incur a loss on Prescott and on Prescott's R&D. The flaw in this release is that Intel is essentially competing against itself, as at some point this processor will be compared to Prescott.

That only matters if Prescott is a low volume part, which it won't be. Intel can either sell an additional Prescott, or a Pentium 4 EE. In either case their cost is the marginal cost of production. The Prescott should have the lower marginal cost but the P4 EE will likely have the higher price tag, and therefor a higher overall profit margin.

Even if the P4EE is initially faster, there is no way that situation will continue, since it's made in a smaller process size. The .09u P4EE will certainly be based of the Prescott core (or more likely it's Xeon equivalent), so at that point it no longer mattress.