NetBurst

NetBurst is the codename for a CPU microarchitecture developed by Intel. It was first introduced in 2000 with the Pentium 4 processor. The NetBurst microarchitecture was notable for its very deep pipeline and high clock speeds, which Intel aimed to leverage for increased performance. This design philosophy differed from Intel's previous P6 microarchitecture, which focused on instruction-level parallelism and shorter pipelines.

Key features of NetBurst included the Rapid Execution Engine, a dual-issue integer pipeline that ran at twice the core clock speed, and the Hyper-Pipelined Technology, which allowed for deeper pipelines to reach higher frequencies. While NetBurst processors achieved impressive clock speeds, the deep pipeline often led to performance penalties when branch mispredictions occurred, as the pipeline had to be flushed and refilled. This also contributed to higher power consumption and heat generation compared to previous architectures.

Despite initial marketing successes and the achievement of clock speeds beyond 3 GHz, NetBurst processors struggled to deliver a proportional increase in real-world application performance. This led to criticism and a decline in Intel's competitive standing in the CPU market. Intel eventually phased out the NetBurst microarchitecture, replacing it with the Core microarchitecture in 2006, which marked a significant shift back towards efficiency and improved performance per clock cycle.