Intel Developer Forum Fall 2002 - Day 2: Live at the Technology Showcase

Banias in Action

Intel's Banias CPU, which we've been talking about a lot today, was running on a desktop reference board at the showcase. The board was using the Montara-GM chipset which only differs from the Odem chipset in that it has integrated graphics:

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Here's a close up of the Montara-GM GMCH (Graphics & Memory Controller Hub):

What's interesting is that even with a very low profile heatsink, the fan was not spinning while the system was idle. The fan would only need to spin up when there was some activity and even then not to a very high speed:

You can't really see it from this picture, but the Banias CPU has a socket very similar to the current uPGA Pentium 4 sockets in terms of its size.

There were a couple other Banias systems on display including this one (below) with a slightly larger heatsink:

The heatsink was not even warm while the system was idle which is quite impressive. We did receive an interesting tidbit today, it seems as if the Banias CPU will debut at 1.6GHz early next year when it is officially released. Not only that but at 1.6GHz it will outperform a Pentium 4-M running at the same speed, obviously due to the larger cache and other micro architectural enhancements. The fastest Pentium 4-M will still be faster than the fastest Banias however.