Yonah/Intel-Core: compatible with T4x? Available 1/6/06?

[hydrostarr]

Might anyone know if the 65nm Yonah (Intel Core) chip will be compatible with my T41 2378DHU (or any other T4x model, for that matter)? Does anyone have any info or educated guesses about projected market prices and availability?

This link claims that Intel will launch this new chip in 1/6/2006:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_Core

Can anyone verify or support this launch date with what they know? Can you quote your sources?

So, in summary:

1) Will this new Yonah/Intel-core process be compatible with my T41 2378DHU?

2) Does anyone have any knowledge or educated guess about its price and/or availability?

3) Is the 1/6/06 launch date valid, and does this mean that I will be able to purchase as this time.

I'm about to buy a processor upgrade for my T41, and I'm trying to see if it's wise to wait for Yonah. For more on my laptop's requirements/applications and other performance-enhancement background, see this thread:
http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.php?t=18608

-Matt

ps:

This thread branches from:
http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.ph ... 453#117453

[hydrostarr]

Other links:

http://www.laptoplogic.com/news/detail.php?id=45
http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.ph ... 823#109823
http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.php?t=17848
http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.php?t=17851
http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.php?t=17359

Background:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pentium_M
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_Core

-Matt

[hydrostarr]

I probably should have started this conversation as a reply to this thread:

http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=27770

My apologies in advance.

Pricepoints are quoted here, not sure of their accuracy:

http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=27770

Note, these prices come with this disclaimer:

This is what we hastily scribbled down on the back of a fag packet from the documents we saw.

My next Yonah question will resolve around Linux/Debian compatibility. Time to go post in the Linux forum...

[edit:]

Linux-compatibility thread:
http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.php?t=18611

-Matt

[christopher_wolf]

Intel changed the Sockets, yet again, for the Yonah; so, if you try to swap it into a T41, I don't think it will work. For right now, I have no clue whatsoever as to how they will be priced or sold; The only thin I can say about the new launch date is that is will be sometime next year; but, to my way of thinking at least, 1/6/06 seems a tad too early.

Cheers

[hydrostarr]

Christopher, et al,

Thanks for the info.

Intel changed the Sockets, yet again, for the Yonah; so, if you try to swap it into a T41, I don't think it will work.

Do you have any references for this stuff?

For right now, I have no clue whatsoever as to how they will be priced or sold

For what it's worth, there's a pricing-link quote above, not sure of accuracy.

The only thin I can say about the new launch date is that is will be sometime next year; but, to my way of thinking at least, 1/6/06 seems a tad too early.

Can anyone else speak to this date? There's several other references that the Janurary launch may happen.

-Matt

[christopher_wolf]

For the socket change? Yes, I was reading a review about them on Anandtech. Let me see if I can pull it up...

http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/sh ... spx?i=2627

Yup, different pin-outs


The only thing I have heard about the release date is that it will be Q1 sometime next year, not a day-precise date per se.

[hydrostarr]

http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/sh ... spx?i=2627
Yup, different pin-outs

Yes, to quote from the article:

The Yonah socket is still a 479-pin interface, however the pin-out has been changed once more, and of course Yonah won’t even physically fit into any current Pentium M motherboards. Instead, you’ll need a brand new motherboard with a brand new chipset. So if you invested in any of the handful of desktop Pentium M motherboards that were released over the past year, you’re unfortunately out of luck.

They have a nice section-blow-up diagram visually pointing out the difference, too.

*sigh* I guess that makes the decision easy for me. Time to go buy a Dothan.

It's too bad, too: Yonah apparently would be more-then-2GB-memory addressable, too (according to http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/sh ... spx?i=2554 ...and apparently the Yonah flavor anandtech uses was a 945G chipset)...and I could of possibly gotten to 4GB of memory with my existing T41 laptop...but that may be too much of a stretch, and Lenovo would undoubtedly never supported this, the BIOS may not have worked in this config (4GB or not), the motherboard may have had a problem, etc etc etc.

From the market-consipiracy-theorist files: I suspect this was purposely done not because the old motherboards are "incompatible" but as a pure money-making move by the partners in the industry. For what it's worth (and before I get targeted by the Intel mafia), I have no facts to base this on, only speculation.

I'm interested, however: is this sort of maneuver (changing a pin-out config as per above such that it makes previously motherboard connects incompatible) a common move for the industry and/or Intel?

Alternatively: Does the pin-out change have any actual technical purpose/merit?

-Matt

[christopher_wolf]

It may or it may not; they can "engineer" it to have "merit" so asking whether or not it has merit just comes back to the question of "Do you want it to work or not?" I have replaced CPUs before, entire system boards; but I have not played with the Pin outs of an Intel CPU. One problem is that you would have quite a bit of difficulty trying to get the Spec Sheets on it as well as various issues with other parts of the system that I shudder to imagine; the specs would not only be a huge *.pdf file, but it would also be guarded by Intel since it would have to go into extreme details about the architecture of the chip. It would be nice to have such sheets; but I fear that since we are the "Public at Large" and not the IBM/Lenovo Engineers, we would not get the need-to-know documentation. I have made various bits of lab equipment (Humna Voice Recognition, etc) that interfaced through a PCI board, RS-232, etc; I can say this; without knowing the specifics of a chip, you can do very little in terms of successfully using it in a system.

[hydrostarr]

It's too bad, too: Yonah apparently would be more-then-2GB-memory addressable, too (according to http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/sh ... spx?i=2554 ...and apparently the Yonah flavor anandtech uses was a 945G chipset)...and I could of possibly gotten to 4GB of memory with my existing T41 laptop...

Well, it appears my analysis was quite off. I did not realize at the time that "chipsets" are different from "processors" and that chipsets come with the motherboard and are not modular/replaceable/upgradeable like the CPU/processors are, or at least according to brentpresley's post:

http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.ph ... 759#117759

So if this point holds merit, then it doesn't matter what CPU I put in my T41 (unless I can somehow replace the chipsets on the motherboard...which I understand is impossible??), I won't get more then 2GB memory in that machine (my T41).

As a side note:

Is there some other place I can read more about the relationships between "processors" and "chipsets"? A wikipedia reference perhaps, or something of that nature?

-Matt

[christopher_wolf]

Here is a good link to get you started

http://www.epinions.com/content_915513476

HTH

[hydrostarr]

Here is a good link to get you started

http://www.epinions.com/content_915513476

HTH

Yes, this helps quite a bit, thanks.

Also, this different-chipset requirement may also address why the Intel folks may have changed, for technically-legitimate reasons, change the pinouts on the Yonah (over the Dothan) processors...to make sure that a Yonah was not plugged into a motherboard that only support Dothan (and below) processors.

Just a guess on my part.

-Matt

[Dmitry Ivanov]

BTW, there were a story some years ago when Pentium III Tualatin was realised. And if remember, Itel told about uncompatiblity this new processor with old Socket370 motherboards, but some people made hardware modifications and started Tualatin on i440BX without any problems. Maybe with Yonah we have same situation?

[christopher_wolf]

Maybe...But then again, there is much more of a physical difference between Dothan and Yonah than there was between the Pentium III and Socket 370 Mobos. If it was yet another single core chipset, then I might have some good ideas about any pin-out changes that were made. Yet being dual core, it isn't immediately clear to me as to what significant changes were made over single core when it comes to the socket interface and how many of these changes are field-critical for the operation of the dual core Yonah as intended.

[hydrostarr]

I'm not sure I'm following the entire conversation here, but I thought I'd mention it if it's not already clear:

Yonah requires (from what I gather) a new motherboard chipset. (This new chipset supports a more-the-2GB-memory-addressability, among other things.) This seems to be a legitimate reason to change the processor pinout to avoid chipset compatibility problems.

...is this a fair analysis?

-Matt

[Dmitry Ivanov]

Maybe...But then again, there is much more of a physical difference between Dothan and Yonah than there was between the Pentium III and Socket 370 Mobos.

Hm... We can see difference of two pins only, but all other pins on Socket has same functionality as "old" Socket for P-M (or not?). I didn’t read any datasheet about this, but its seems that DualCore realized by using some special internal architecture of processor unit (for example some special BUS has a place inside CPU and externally it has 98% compatibility with “old” socket). And special chipset needs only for supporting new instructions like to EMT64 (addressing more memory).

[christopher_wolf]

I think that Mr.Ivanov is correct in his analysis about the changes in the architecture of the chipset. The only visible physical change is the difference between the pinouts; what Intel did inside the chip, Bus extensions, special handlers, etc, is anybody's guess. Without the spec sheets for it, which I think only the R&D Engineering Teams get per computer manufacturer, nobody can say for sure.