On February 1, 2004, Intel launched Pentium 4 "Prescott." For the first time, the core has a 90nm process, and it is also a major reworking of the Pentium 4's micro architecture. Northwood runs slightly faster than a Prescott although a Prescott clocked at the same rate as a Northwood. At present, the fastest Prescott-based processor is 3.8 GHz.
On release, the Prescott generated approximately 60% more heat clock-for-clock compared to Northwood. With a shift in socket type, from Socket 478 to LGA775 the average temperatures were slightly lowered.
The thermal problems were so severe that a decision to abandon the Prescott architecture altogether was taken by Intel. Plans for 4GHz processors were stalled by Intel in favor of dual core processors.
