Hyper Threaded / Hyper Pipelined

[rrrssssss]

Hello Forum members,

Is hyper threading technology and hyper pipeline technology the same thing? I bought a motherboard that supports hyper threading technology and a Pentium 4 2.4 that offers hyper pipeline technology. Do the two work together for a speed increase? Your input would be much appreciated.

Roy S. Smith

 

[Jeff7181]

I've never heard of "Hyper Pipeline Technology." I've heard of Hyper-Threading, and Hyper Transport, but not Hyper Pipeline.

 

[rrrssssss]

Sure, it's printed on the back of the box my Intel Pentium 4 shipped in. It reads as follows:

400mhz System Bus
512 KB L2 Advanced Transfer Cache
Hyper Pipelined Technology
Rapid Execution Engine
Streaming SIMD Extensions 2
128 Bit Enhanced Floating Point Unit
Execution Trace Cache
Advanced Dynamic Execution

Can anybody enlighten me? Thanks.

 

[Wingznut]

From Intel's P4 FAQ

Q: What is Hyper-Pipelined Technology?
A: Hyper-pipelined technology refers to the new deeper pipeline. The Pentium 4 processor uses a 20-stage pipe that enables an industry-leading clock rate. These extended pipeline stages allow for higher frequency and headroom. By comparison, P6 micro-architecture, the foundation for the Pentium III processor, has only a ten-stage pipeline. Each processor pipeline stage performs a specific task before passing execution to the next stage of the pipeline. As in a manufacturing assembly line, each stage in the process can operate more quickly on its specific task, allowing the entire pipeline to run at higher speeds, increasing overall throughput.

 

[jiffylube1024]

Ironically "hyper pipelined" makes for a much slower IPC. Yes, this so-called "hyper pipelined" architecture (20 stage pipeline vs 12-14 on the Athlon XP (I forget which) ) does allow for much higher clock speeds (ie 3 GHz and above on the P4) it also is the reason why a 2.2 Ghz Athlon keeps up with a ~2.8 GHz P4.

Basically, Hyper Pipelined is just a markeing term. It's not a performance feature.

Hyper Threading on the other hand is the process which allows the CPU to be treated like a dual processor P4.