Hi, this is Wayne again with a topic “PC Parts That Disappeared”.
We’Ve gotten used to seeing pretty standardized parts in our pcs, ddr ram, atx, motherboards and square shaped cpus, very neat very tidy, but along the way there have been some wacky standards that look quite different from what we have today. Let’S start by talking about slot based cpus, that’s right! Instead of fitting a square processor into a socket and putting a heatsink on top of it to make a technology sandwich delicious for a few years in the late 90s, you’d have a slot in your motherboard, similar to a pci slot, where you’d plug in a cpu Assembly that looked like an adapter card, it consisted of the cpu itself soldered to a pcb and covered with a plastic shroud. So you might mistake it for a modern graphics card or even an old laptop battery at first glance. But why was this done other than to confuse future pc enthusiasts? They were trolls back then. Was it just to make the cpu easier to install? Well, not exactly you see the first slot cpu for desktops was the intel pentium 2 from 1997, and it was designed to ensure there was enough real estate for the cpu’s cache that small amount of super fast memory that holds information.
The cpu needs immediately but hold on a second isn’t. The cache, typically just integrated onto the cpu, die itself, you’re right that it is on modern cpus, but back in the late 90s. It wasn’t quite that easy. The pentium pro, which came before the pentium 2, had a built-in cache next to the cpu in the same package.
An arrangement that improved performance but putting two chips in one package meant that you’d have to throw away both chips. If either one had a flaw which intel could only detect after they were put together, meaning yields were low and there was lots of wasted silicon. The pentium 2’s slot design attempted to solve this problem by moving the cache memory away from the cpu package, completely, which necessitated a large pcb to mount. Both components intel also used the slot design for a few celeron and pentium 3 models and amd used it for its original athlon processors.
However, shrinking transistors and improved manufacturing soon made it possible to simply put the cache on the chip itself and both intel and amd stopped, making slotted processors around the year 2001. coincidence. Moving on, let’s talk about btx, as the name implies.
This was meant to be a successor to atx the standard form factor for motherboards intel launched btx towards the end of 2004. Thinking that systems based on this new standard would take up less space and stay cooler. That’S because btx systems featured a dedicated air duct for the cpu, with a fan that drew cool air directly from outside the case.
Other heat, generating components like the south bridge and expansion controllers were placed closer together, improving efficiency and generating less waste heat. Thermal improvements were seen as important around this time since computers were quickly becoming more powerful and generating more heat. So why did a design primarily based around getting lower temperatures fail so spectacularly? Well, you see. The real reason btx was conceived was because the main cpu lineup that team blue was trying to sell at that time.
The pentium 4 ran really hot due to problems with the micro architecture. Those issues are notoriously hard to solve. So, instead of continuing to push a whole new form, factor intel ultimately decided to simply focus on making new chips that took less power and we got the core 2 lineup in 2006, the same year that intel decided to stop trying to make btx happen. Finally, my friends: let’s pour one out for ram bus and no, this wasn’t a transit line started by sheep, even though we all want that. Rambus is a company that developed rdram, which was a major competitor to the ddr, sdram used in modern pcs, and it even supported double data rate transfer before sdram did so intel agreed to use rambus exclusively for the pentium 4, meaning lots of people in the industry Expected rdram to dominate, however, impressive numbers on paper. Don’T always translate to success in the market as any dnd dungeon master would tell you.
Rdram was tricky to manufacture, expensive, ran, hot and didn’t even offer better performance in most typical applications, plus the modules had to be installed in pairs, making it even more expensive for consumers who just needed a pc for basic tasks. With all these issues, it’s not surprising that intel jumped at the opportunity to support faster, cheaper ddr sd ram when it hit the market in 2000.. Rdram was effectively dead by 2003, joining the likes of betamax and later hd dvd in the big e-waste pile in the sky, and that pile has plenty more old gadgets. We didn’t talk about today, so what failed technologies? Would you like to see us cover in a future episode, be sure to let us know down in the comments section down there thanks to private internet access for sponsoring this video pia, is a vpn that masks your ip and encrypts your traffic with reliable service and No bandwidth caps, it has configurable encryption and an internet kill switch which keeps you in control of your connection, combined with private browsing.
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