When it comes to Intel's server processors, cache is king. A server roadmap posted on the company's Web site indicates that Intel plans to double the amount of on-chip memory available on the Xeon processor MP, which is designed for use in 4-way servers. The enhancement will be included in a forthcoming release of Xeon MP, code named Potomac, which is expected in the second quarter of this year.

Intel had previously disclosed that the Potomac cache size would be larger than the 4MB available in the company's current 3-GHz Xeon MP chips. The roadmap indicates that Potomac will have a clock speed equal to or greater than 3.5 GHz and a cache size of 8MB.

While faster frequencies were once the standard way of improving processor performance, Intel has encountered difficulty moving its processor to 4 GHz. In October, the company backed off on a promise to release a 4 GHz version of its Pentium 4 chip, and none of the Pentium or Xeon processors on the server roadmap list frequencies higher than 3.8 GHz.

BUT:

Intel has also made design decisions that limit the speed with which Intel's processing cores can communicate with memory, forcing the company to boost performance by building larger and larger caches, says Kevin Krewell, editor-in-chief of the Microprocessor Report in San Jose, California. "Because they lag in that feature, that's one of the reasons they have to build up the cache size," he says.

Initial Evan: Perhaps this is why AMD's lower clock cycles are still faster.