Resume These ignominious results are the consequence of a cheap design or simple slackness. If the CPUs L1 cache covers the complete address space, the management unit of the L2 cache at least should be designed so it does not obstruct anything. It would have been even better however, if Intel had extended the Tag-RAM to more than 11 Bit. This way the Pentium-II would be capable to handle up to 4 GByte RAM like its predecessor PentiumPro. In practice this design flaw means that a computer based on Pentium-II can only be equipped with a maximum of 512 MByte main memory.
Every additional Megabyte is a waste of money.
Since today some graphics workstations come with 256 and more MByte already, such a processor does not seem to have a secure future. The server area is hit even harder. Here 512 MByte and more are by no means uncommon today. A network manager buying a Pentium-II server today risks that it can not keep up with increasing demands. Whether the successor of Pentium II will be able to handle more main memory is not certain given Intels reaction.