(November 29, 2000) — Ever wondered what it would be like breezing through your favorite games and applications at a blistering 1.5 GHz? That’s exactly what you will be doing soon as Intel releases its long awaited Pentium 4 processor. The first motherboards supporting this processor are going to fully utilize Rambus Memory (RDRAM). However, Intel plans to release motherboards supporting SDRAM by late 2001. The Pentium 4 is going to be equipped with a new architecture called Intel NetBurst Architecture, according to an Intel press release. The newly designed architecture is the first to contain Hyper Pipelined Technology, which doubles the pipeline depth to 20 stages, significantly increasing processor performance and frequency capability. Another one of Pentium 4’s main improvements is its 400 MHz bus speed, which nearly triples the current bus speed of most Pentium III machines. This does not mean that the Pentium III would go out of production. The Pentium III will continue to dominate, but the crossover point is expected sometime in early 2002 when the production of the Pentium 4 would exceed that of the Pentium III. One of the more noticeable improvements that the user will experience first-hand is the addition of 144 new instructions. These instructions are focused specifically at the Internet, imaging, streaming video, speech, multimedia and multi-tasking user environments. Other than the new instructions, users will also notice performance enhancements in many of the tasks that they often encounter. When compared with the fastest Pentium III running at 1 GHz, the Pentium 4 will offer a performance boost of up to 25% in MP3 audio encoding, 50% in video encoding and 44% in video games such as Quake 3 and Counterstrike. So what do Clark students expect from the Pentium 4? Senior Vacheh Sardarian said, “It would give end users much better data and multimedia performance when compared to the current speed daemon, the Pentium III.” He said that the 400 MHz bus speed is the key factor in performance enhancement. Senior Edgar Abramyan said, “The Pentium 4 will be a better processor performance wise than the AMD Thunderbird and would help decrease lag when surfing the net.” In addition to the 400 MHz bus speed, Intel has also set its sights at the 2 GHz mark. Even though it will take a good three months after the release of the first Pentium 4, the 2 GHz limit will surely be broken soon as constant competition increases between Intel’s rival, AMD. The NetBurst micro-architecture is the first new desktop processor micro-architecture for Intel since the P6 micro-architecture introduced in the early Pentium Pro Processors, according to an Intel press release. Initially, the processor is targeted at the consumer enthusiasts and business power users. The advanced technology behind the processor will definitely maximize the performance of both today and the future while keeping consumers on the cutting edge of the Internet.