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By Root 1174 0

Corporation thoroughly dominated the personal computer market with its CPUs and motherboard support chips. At nearly every step in the evolution of the PC, Intel has led the way with technological advances and surprising flexibility for such a huge corporation. Intel CPUs—and more specifically, their instruction sets—define the personal computer. Intel currently produces a dozen or so models of CPU for both desktop and portable computers. Most of Intel’s desktop processors are sold under the Celeron, Pentium, and Core brands. Their very low-power portable/smart phone chips are branded Atom; their high-end workstation/server ones are called Xeon.

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NOTE As we go to print, Intel has announced a simplified naming scheme for the majority of its new processors, all under the Core brand name. The Core i3, Core i5, and Core i7 processor names quickly relay where the processor fits in relation to other Core processors. The Core i7 will offer more power than the Core i5, for example. My guess is that they’ll keep the Atom processor line separate and distinct from the Core family.

AMD

You can’t really talk about CPUs without mentioning Advanced Micro Devices—the Cogswell Cogs to Intel’s Spacely Sprockets. AMD makes superb CPUs for the PC market and provides competition that keeps Intel on it toes. Like Intel, AMD doesn’t just make CPUs, but their CPU business is certainly the part that the public notices. AMD has made CPUs that clone the function of Intel CPUs. If Intel invented the CPU used in the original IBM PC, how could AMD make clone CPUs without getting sued? Well, chipmakers have a habit of exchanging technologies through cross-license agreements. Way back in 1976, AMD and Intel signed just such an agreement, giving AMD the right to copy certain types of CPUs.

The trouble started with the Intel 8088. Intel needed AMD to produce CPUs. The PC business was young back then, and providing multiple suppliers gave IBM confidence in their choice of CPUs. Life was good. But after a few years, Intel had grown tremendously and no longer wanted AMD to make CPUs. AMD said, “Too bad. See this agreement you signed?” Throughout the 1980s and into the 1990s, AMD made pin-for-pin identical CPUs that matched the Intel lines of CPUs (Figure 5-19). You could yank an Intel CPU out of a system and snap in an AMD CPU—no problem!

Figure 5-19 Identical Intel and AMD 486 CPUs from the early 1990s

In January 1995, after many years of legal wrangling, Intel and AMD settled and decided to end the licensing agreements. As a result of this settlement, AMD chips are no longer compatible with sockets or motherboards made for Intel CPUs—even though in some cases the chips look similar. Today, if you want to use an AMD CPU, you must purchase a motherboard designed for AMD CPUs. If you want to use an Intel CPU, you must purchase a motherboard designed for Intel CPUs. So you now have a choice: Intel or AMD. You’ll look at both brands as you learn more about modern processors in this chapter.

CPU Packages

One of the many features that make PCs attractive is the ability for users (okay, maybe advanced users) to replace one CPU with another. If you want a removable CPU, you need your CPUs to use a standardized package with a matching standardized socket on the motherboard. CPUs have gone through many packages, with manufacturers changing designs like snakes shedding skins. The fragile little DIP package of the 8088 (Figure 5-20) gave way to rugged slotted processors in the late 1990s (Figure 5-21), which have in turn given way to CPUs using the now prevalent grid array packaging.

Figure 5-20 The dual inline pin package of the Intel 8088

Figure 5-21 An AMD Athlon Slot A processor

The grid array package has been popular since the mid-1980s. The most common form of grid array is the pin grid array (PGA). PGA CPUs are distinguished by their square shape with many—usually hundreds—of tiny pins (Figure 5-22).

Figure 5-22 Samples of PGA packages

Collectively, Intel and AMD have used close to 100 variations of the PGA package