5 ms·

I remember hearing a rumour as a young teen that the Coppermine codename meant it actually had copper wiring and that's what made it faster somehow. Copper has

by Nition 1mo ago

I remember hearing a rumour as a young teen that the Coppermine codename meant it actually had copper wiring and that's what made it faster somehow. Copper has lower resistance than aluminium and can therefore help chips run faster - it makes sense! But it was just a codename and the coppermine had aluminium interconnects. My family got a PIII 533Mhz coppermine, in the early sideways Slot 1 configuration. Blazing fast at the time. Been a long time since I heard anyone say "coppermine". CPU progress was wild in the 90s, where you could wait two years and your new CPU would be double the old one's speed at the same price point. Today it takes near a decade for CPU speed to double. I also recall the first game that advertised its exciting use of the new MMX technology: POD.[1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/POD_(video_game) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/POD_(video_game)

rzzzt 1mo ago
The one I've read is that Tualatin comes from "too late in" i.e. a model introduced too late in the process/architecture lifecycle to be profitable.
Lerc 1mo ago
Copper interconnects might have been introduced around then, but I suspect the naming is more coincidental than anything. I remember just after IBM got copper interconnects working, there was a stock market dive, I ranted to my partner about how crazy it is for a company to achieve a sought after goal and have its value decrease. The next day there was a news story about the entire market decline being stalled by the force of IBM buying back it's own shares. My partner told me I should rant less and invest more.
- Nition 1mo ago
  Haha, yeah the rumour came around at a time when there was real work going on with copper interconnects which just confused the situation, but the coppermine didn't use them.
moosedev 1mo ago
(Code)named after https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coppermine_River https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coppermine_River , apparently. POD was pretty rad :) Thanks for the reminder of it (and all the MMX marketing around it.)
245425456g 1mo ago
P3 Coppermine was 0.18 µm. P3 Tualatin was 0.13 µm with Cu and low-K. So no, Coppermine had nothing to do with Cu in the process.
- Nition 1mo ago
  Wow, I never knew they actually did switch to copper on the next model. What a missed naming opportunity.
wormius 1mo ago
C-f "pod" There it is :)
easyThrowaway 1mo ago
Ironically P.o.d. didn't really use MMX at all except for Dolby Surround decoding[1]. [1]https://retromediahub.com/index.php/Pod:_Planet_of_Death https://retromediahub.com/index.php/Pod:_Planet_of_Death
- Nition 1mo ago
  Your link says that Dolby Surround is one feature that won't work at all without MMX on, but doesn't go so far as to say that it's the only feature that's enhanced with MMX (it uses phrasing like "MMX‑dependent features such as Dolby Surround"). I'm not saying you're wrong, but your link doesn't confirm your statement either. Doesn't look like there's any conclusive info out there, so probably someone needs to actually decompile it and look for MMX opcodes.
  - easyThrowaway 29d ago
    I remember one of the original developers explaining in a blog post that MMX support came right before the original release and was added just for Dolby Surround, unfortunately can't find it anywhere. The remaining references available regarding this factoid are incredibly ancient, too: - https://groups.google.com/g/comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.misc/c/MRFVtFryiqU/m/-KhH9DX5dpAJ https://groups.google.com/g/comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.misc/c/MRF... - https://www.mobygames.com/game/644/pod/user-review/2384353/ https://www.mobygames.com/game/644/pod/user-review/2384353/ No idea if any additional support was added in one of the subsequent releases.
_the_inflator 1mo ago
Game makers started to utilize Moore’s Law and produced games, that required actual hardware. During the 00ish years it felt like your system gets killed by a new game. With the advent of the online update some game makers went way to far, Gothic in Europe was a pre-alpha release that never really got finalized but was really anticipated by gamers here. I stopped buying games, since this was a rat race. Everything was evolving and with the utilization of the GForce CPU gaming reached a new hardware design phase where CPU, bus (!), ram, essentially everything had to be finetuned otherwise you would run into massive performance penalties so to say. The term bottleneck wasn’t used back then but describes very clearly the dilemma back then. In essence everything was getting more expensive while design considerations were critical. And the systems were so fragile. Some boards couldn’t handle Intel’s cooling demand for the CPU, it was a crazy time. I remember the infamous AMD diss that led the company somewhat to the top tier their were then with the Athlon, when a dude filmed what happens during runtime when you remove the heat fan from an Intel vs. AMD. Weird time, glad it is over. So much hardware and money burned.

by Nition 1mo ago

rzzzt 1mo ago

The one I've read is that Tualatin comes from "too late in" i.e. a model introduced too late in the process/architecture lifecycle to be profitable.

Lerc 1mo ago

Copper interconnects might have been introduced around then, but I suspect the naming is more coincidental than anything. I remember just after IBM got copper interconnects working, there was a stock market dive, I ranted to my partner about how crazy it is for a company to achieve a sought after goal and have its value decrease. The next day there was a news story about the entire market decline being stalled by the force of IBM buying back it's own shares. My partner told me I should rant less and invest more.

Nition 1mo ago
Haha, yeah the rumour came around at a time when there was real work going on with copper interconnects which just confused the situation, but the coppermine didn't use them.

moosedev 1mo ago

(Code)named after https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coppermine_River https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coppermine_River , apparently. POD was pretty rad :) Thanks for the reminder of it (and all the MMX marketing around it.)

245425456g 1mo ago

P3 Coppermine was 0.18 µm. P3 Tualatin was 0.13 µm with Cu and low-K. So no, Coppermine had nothing to do with Cu in the process.

Nition 1mo ago
Wow, I never knew they actually did switch to copper on the next model. What a missed naming opportunity.

wormius 1mo ago

C-f "pod" There it is :)

easyThrowaway 1mo ago

Ironically P.o.d. didn't really use MMX at all except for Dolby Surround decoding[1]. [1]https://retromediahub.com/index.php/Pod:_Planet_of_Death https://retromediahub.com/index.php/Pod:_Planet_of_Death

Nition 1mo ago
Your link says that Dolby Surround is one feature that won't work at all without MMX on, but doesn't go so far as to say that it's the only feature that's enhanced with MMX (it uses phrasing like "MMX‑dependent features such as Dolby Surround"). I'm not saying you're wrong, but your link doesn't confirm your statement either. Doesn't look like there's any conclusive info out there, so probably someone needs to actually decompile it and look for MMX opcodes.
- easyThrowaway 29d ago
  I remember one of the original developers explaining in a blog post that MMX support came right before the original release and was added just for Dolby Surround, unfortunately can't find it anywhere. The remaining references available regarding this factoid are incredibly ancient, too: - https://groups.google.com/g/comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.misc/c/MRFVtFryiqU/m/-KhH9DX5dpAJ https://groups.google.com/g/comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.misc/c/MRF... - https://www.mobygames.com/game/644/pod/user-review/2384353/ https://www.mobygames.com/game/644/pod/user-review/2384353/ No idea if any additional support was added in one of the subsequent releases.

_the_inflator 1mo ago

Game makers started to utilize Moore’s Law and produced games, that required actual hardware. During the 00ish years it felt like your system gets killed by a new game. With the advent of the online update some game makers went way to far, Gothic in Europe was a pre-alpha release that never really got finalized but was really anticipated by gamers here. I stopped buying games, since this was a rat race. Everything was evolving and with the utilization of the GForce CPU gaming reached a new hardware design phase where CPU, bus (!), ram, essentially everything had to be finetuned otherwise you would run into massive performance penalties so to say. The term bottleneck wasn’t used back then but describes very clearly the dilemma back then. In essence everything was getting more expensive while design considerations were critical. And the systems were so fragile. Some boards couldn’t handle Intel’s cooling demand for the CPU, it was a crazy time. I remember the infamous AMD diss that led the company somewhat to the top tier their were then with the Athlon, when a dude filmed what happens during runtime when you remove the heat fan from an Intel vs. AMD. Weird time, glad it is over. So much hardware and money burned.