Overview of Today's CPU's
Here is a brief overview of CPU's in use today for some common desktop and server units.
AMD
ATHLON - The AMD Athlon processor is the world's most powerful x86 processor, significantly outperforming Intel's Pentium III processor
and delivering the highest integer, floating point and 3D multimedia performance for applications running on x86 system platforms . The AMD
Athlon provides industry-leading processing power for cutting-edge software applications, including digital content creation, digital photo editing,
digital video, image compression, video encoding for streaming over the Internet, soft DVD, commercial 3D modeling, workstation-class computer-
aided design (CAD), commercial desktop publishing, and speech recognition. It also offers the scalability and ¡§peace-of-mind¡¨ reliability that IT
managers and business users require for networked enterprise computing.
Intel
Pentium III Xeon - With the advent of the powerful Pentium III Xeon processor, Intel-based servers challenge RISC-based servers in
price/performance and raw performance. This premium server engine from Intel will deliver speeds of up to 550MHz (up to 733MHz in 2-way
platforms), providing more throughput for Internet applications and the ability to use multiprocessing and clustering to build solutions for even the
most demanding e-Business applications. Pentium III Xeon processor-based servers have the enhanced scalability, availability, reliability, and
manageability you need for business in the Internet age.
Celeron
- The Celeron processor is for low-cost
desktop PC's. The Celeron uses the same P6 (80686) architecture as the
Pentium II, but with one major difference. Pentium II chips have speed enhancing 512 kilobyte secondary caches, located within the Pentium II
cartridge. The design improves performance, but increases cost. Cost-conscious Celeron processors do not have a secondary cache. The Celeron
processor is the most popular chip used in home systems. The low cost coupled with Intel reliability make this a good entry level central processing
unit. Newer Celeron chips have about half the secondary cache memory as Pentium II chips, but have integrated the cache onto the surface of the
processor to trim costs.