What is the Intel Xeon Microprocessor?
The Xeon is basically a high-power version of the PII. The clock speeds are not different, but none the less, the Xeon outperforms the PII and if the speed is needed, is a good choice when compared to the PII. What makes the Xeon a better choice for demanding applications are two main features: the size of the cache and the speed of the interconnection between the cache and the Xeon. Like the PII the Xeon has an onboard level 2 cache. The difference is that the size of the PII cache is 512K bytes, while the size of the Xeon cahce is 512K, 1M, or 2M. The Xeon is available with different cache sizes. Another difference is that the cache on the PII operates at one-half the microprocessor clock speed. This means that in the 400 MHz PII, the cache operates at 200 MHz. The Xeon cache operates at the same speed as the microprocessor clock. A 400 MHz Xeon operates its cache at 400 MHz! The only other difference between the PII and the Xeon is the requirement for a different chipset. The PII us
