Kougar
01-27-2007, 09:00 AM
Plenty of cool info with this article (http://www.dailytech.com/Life+With+Penryn/article5869.htm), I highly suggest just going there and directly reading it. Intel also announced they will be moving to the 22nm node in 2011.
Safe bet that Penryn will be a hit for overclockers and people that enjoy cooler running processors alike. ;)
Intel claims the upcoming Penryn will fit 410 million transistors for the dual-core model, and 820 million transistors for the quad-core variants -- dual-core Conroe utilizes just 298 million transistors. Intel's 45nm SRAM shuttle chip announced last year had a little over 1 billion transistors and fit on a 119mm^2 package. However, the initial Penryn quad-core processors will use a multi-die packaging, so it's realistic to expect only 410 million transistors per die at launch.
The optical shrink allows the engineers to boost clock speed, but the additional real estate means the company can put more logic on the processor as well. "Most of that transistor savings is spent on increasing the cache over Core 2" added Smith.
Conroe added additional SSE instructions at launch, but Intel claimed at Fall IDF 2006 that SSE4 was specifically reserved for Nehalem. Intel's guidance for Penryn claims the family will feature "New Intel SSE4 instructions expand capabilities and performance for media/HPC applications."
When asked about the effects of SSE4 on Penryn, Smith responded to DailyTech claiming "We're seeing excellent double digit performance [percentage] gains on multimedia applications."
Penryn is still not without its mysteries; a primary concern for enthusiasts is motherboard and socket support. Penryn will launch on Socket 775 -- meaning existing motherboards can physically harbor the new CPU but electrically might not. "Motherboard developers will have to make some minor changes to support [Penryn]. We can't guarantee that a person could just plug the chip into every motherboard on the market today." However, Smith also claimed the Penryn boot test that grabbed so many headlines last week occurred on unmodified hardware that included a notebook, several desktop motherboards and several server motherboards.
The lithography process for Penryn, dubbed P1266, is not just a shrink from 65nm to 45nm. Perhaps the most significant advance on P1266 is the use of high-k dielectrics and metal gate transistors. In a nutshell, the polysilicon gate used on transistors today is replaced with a metal layer and the silicon dioxide dielectric that sits between the substrate and the transistor is replaced by a high-k dielectric.
Intel's lithography roadmap no longer ends at P1268, the 32nm node. Earlier today Intel revealed its 22nm node, dubbed 1270, slated for first production in 2011.
Edit: LegitReviews did a much more thorough breakdown and has further info: http://www.legitreviews.com/article/450/1/
Take note, Intel was demonstrating this at the press event, on unmodded/unchanged hardware:
Unknown frequency 45nm dual-core mobile processor in a notebook with Microsoft Vista running Microsoft Office 2003 applications
2.13GHz 45nm dual-core desktop processor running high definition video content (1080P) under Microsoft Vista.
1.86GHz 45nm quad-core desktop processor running Ubisoft's Rainbow Six Las Vegas game under Microsoft Vista
Two, 2.13GHz 45nm dual-core processors running Glaze Workstation application under Microsoft Windows 2000 Advanced Server
Two, 2.13GHz 45nm quad-core processors encoding a video in Adobe Premier under Microsoft Vista
Intel is screaming ahead, they already have working Quad-core Penryns going! :jawdrop:
Safe bet that Penryn will be a hit for overclockers and people that enjoy cooler running processors alike. ;)
Intel claims the upcoming Penryn will fit 410 million transistors for the dual-core model, and 820 million transistors for the quad-core variants -- dual-core Conroe utilizes just 298 million transistors. Intel's 45nm SRAM shuttle chip announced last year had a little over 1 billion transistors and fit on a 119mm^2 package. However, the initial Penryn quad-core processors will use a multi-die packaging, so it's realistic to expect only 410 million transistors per die at launch.
The optical shrink allows the engineers to boost clock speed, but the additional real estate means the company can put more logic on the processor as well. "Most of that transistor savings is spent on increasing the cache over Core 2" added Smith.
Conroe added additional SSE instructions at launch, but Intel claimed at Fall IDF 2006 that SSE4 was specifically reserved for Nehalem. Intel's guidance for Penryn claims the family will feature "New Intel SSE4 instructions expand capabilities and performance for media/HPC applications."
When asked about the effects of SSE4 on Penryn, Smith responded to DailyTech claiming "We're seeing excellent double digit performance [percentage] gains on multimedia applications."
Penryn is still not without its mysteries; a primary concern for enthusiasts is motherboard and socket support. Penryn will launch on Socket 775 -- meaning existing motherboards can physically harbor the new CPU but electrically might not. "Motherboard developers will have to make some minor changes to support [Penryn]. We can't guarantee that a person could just plug the chip into every motherboard on the market today." However, Smith also claimed the Penryn boot test that grabbed so many headlines last week occurred on unmodified hardware that included a notebook, several desktop motherboards and several server motherboards.
The lithography process for Penryn, dubbed P1266, is not just a shrink from 65nm to 45nm. Perhaps the most significant advance on P1266 is the use of high-k dielectrics and metal gate transistors. In a nutshell, the polysilicon gate used on transistors today is replaced with a metal layer and the silicon dioxide dielectric that sits between the substrate and the transistor is replaced by a high-k dielectric.
Intel's lithography roadmap no longer ends at P1268, the 32nm node. Earlier today Intel revealed its 22nm node, dubbed 1270, slated for first production in 2011.
Edit: LegitReviews did a much more thorough breakdown and has further info: http://www.legitreviews.com/article/450/1/
Take note, Intel was demonstrating this at the press event, on unmodded/unchanged hardware:
Unknown frequency 45nm dual-core mobile processor in a notebook with Microsoft Vista running Microsoft Office 2003 applications
2.13GHz 45nm dual-core desktop processor running high definition video content (1080P) under Microsoft Vista.
1.86GHz 45nm quad-core desktop processor running Ubisoft's Rainbow Six Las Vegas game under Microsoft Vista
Two, 2.13GHz 45nm dual-core processors running Glaze Workstation application under Microsoft Windows 2000 Advanced Server
Two, 2.13GHz 45nm quad-core processors encoding a video in Adobe Premier under Microsoft Vista
Intel is screaming ahead, they already have working Quad-core Penryns going! :jawdrop: