Intel Details Upcoming New Processor Generations

Marking the next step in Intel's "tick-tock" product strategy and cadence to deliver a new process technology with an enhanced microarchitecture or entirely new microarchitecture every year, Intel Corporation will begin producing its next-generation Penryn family of processors in the second half of this year. These new processors benefit from enhancements to the Intel® Core™ microarchitecture and also Intel's industry-leading 45nm Hi-k process technology with its hafnium-based high-K + metal gate transistor design, which results in higher performance and more energy-efficient processors.

Intel has more than 15 45nm Hi-k product designs in various stages of development, and will have two 45nm manufacturing fabs in production by the end of the year, with a total of four in production by the second half of 2008 that will deliver tens of millions of these processors. Below are many of the details of the Penryn processor family and a glimpse into some of the key features of Intel's future generation of processors, codenamed Nehalem.

PENRYN FAMILY MICROARCHITECTURE INNOVATIONS

• A Range of Products -- Six Penryn family processors, including dual- and quad-core desktop processors and a dual-core mobile processor are all under the Intel Core processor brand name as well as new dual- and quad-core server processors under the Intel® Xeon® processor brand name. A processor for higher-end server multiprocessing systems is also under development. As previously noted, Intel already has a total of 15 45nm products scheduled.
• Technical Marvel -- 45nm next-generation Intel® Core™2 quad-core processors will have 820 million transistors. Thanks to our high-k metal transistor invention, think of 820 million more power efficient light bulbs going on and off at light-speeds. The dual-core version has a die size of 107mm2, which is 25 percent smaller than Intel's current 65nm products - and quarter of the size of the average U.S. postage stamp - and operate at the same or lower power than Intel's current dual-core processors.
• Deep Power Down for Energy Savings, Improved Battery Life -- The mobile Penryn processor has a new advanced power management state called Deep Power Down Technology that significantly reduces the power of the processor during idle periods such that internal transistor power leakage is no longer a factor. This helps extend battery life in laptops. This is a major advancement over previous generation industry-leading Intel mobile processors.
• Intel Dynamic Acceleration Technology Enhanced Performance for Single Threaded Apps -- For the mobile Penryn processor, Intel has enhanced the Intel® Dynamic Acceleration Technology available in current Intel Core 2 processors. This feature uses the power headroom freed up when a core is made inactive to boost the performance of another still active core. Imagine a shower with two powerful water shower heads, when one shower head is turned off, the other has increased water pressure (performance).
• Speeding Up Video, Photo Imaging, and High Performance Software -- Penryn includes Intel® Streaming SIMD Extensions 4 (SSE4) instructions, the largest unique instruction set addition since the original SSE Instruction Set Architecture (ISA). This extends the Intel® 64 instruction set architecture to expand the performance and capabilities of the Intel® architecture.
• Other Technical Features to Improve Performance
  • Microarchitecture Optimizations -- Increases the overall performance and energy efficiency of the already leading Intel Core microarchitecture to deliver more instruction executions per clock cycle, which results in more performance and quicker PC responsiveness.
  • Enhanced Intel® Virtualization Technology -- Penryn speeds up virtual machine transition (entry/exit) times by an average of 25 to 75 percent. This is all done through microarchitecture improvements and requires no virtual machine software changes. Virtualization partitions or compartmentalizes a single computer so that it can run separate operating systems and software, which can better leverage multicore processing power, increase efficiency and cut costs by letting a single machine act as many virtual "mini" computers.
  • Higher Frequencies -- Penryn family of products will deliver higher overall clock frequencies within existing power and thermal envelopes to further increase performance. Desktop and server products will introduce speeds at greater than 3GHz.
  • Fast Division of Numbers – Penryn-based processors provide fast divider performance, roughly doubling the divider speed over previous generations for computations used in nearly all applications through the inclusion of a new, faster divide technique called Radix 16. The ability to divide instructions and commands faster increases a computer's performance.
  • Larger Caches -- Penryn processors include up to a 50 percent larger L2 cache with a higher degree of associativity to further improve the hit rate and maximize its utilization. Dual-core Penryn processors will feature up to a 6MB L2 cache and quad-core processors up to a 12MB L2 cache. Cache is a memory reservoir where frequently accessed data can be stored for more rapid access. Larger and faster cache sizes speed a computer's performance and response time.
  • Unique Super Shuffle Engine -- By implementing a full-width, single-pass shuffle unit that is 128-bits wide, Penryn processors can perform full-width shuffles in a single cycle. This significantly improves performance for SSE2, SSE3 and SSE4 instructions that have shuffle-like operations such as pack, unpack and wider packed shifts. This feature will increase performance for content creation, imaging, video and high-performance computing.

NEHALEM MICROARCHITECTURE

After Penryn and the 45nm Hi-k silicon technology introduction comes Intel's next-generation microarchitecture (Nehalem) slated for initial production in 2008. By continuing to innovate at this rapid cadence, Intel will deliver enormous performance and energy efficiency gains in years to come, adding more performance features and capabilities for new and improved applications. Here are some new initial disclosures around our Nehalem microarchitecture:

• Dynamically scalable for leadership performance on demand with energy efficiency
• Dynamically managed cores, threads, cache, interfaces and power
• Leverages leading 4 instruction issue Intel® Core microarchitecture technology
• Simultaneous multi-threading (similar to Intel Hyper-Threading Technology) returns to enhance performance and energy efficiency
• Innovative new Intel® SSE4 and ATA instruction set architecture additions
• Superior multi-level shared cache leverages Intel® Smart Cache technology
• Leadership system and memory bandwidth
• Performance enhanced dynamic power management
• Design scalable for optimal price/performance/energy efficiency in each market segment
• New system architecture for next-generation Intel processors and platforms
• Scalable performance: 1 to 16+ threads, 1 to 8+ cores, scalable cache sizes
• Scalable and configurable system interconnects and integrated memory controllers
• High performance integrated graphics engine for client

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Computer Processor

Data processing systems are systems that manipulate, process, and store data. The processor is the brain of a computer system, performing all calculations and other data manipulation under the control of application and operating system software. A computer data processor is often referred to as a microprocessor.
Modern computer systems include a microprocessor and a system memory for storing instructions to be executed by the microprocessor and data to be processed by the instructions. A microprocessor is a circuit that combines the instruction-handling, arithmetic, and logical operations of a computer on a single semiconductor integrated circuit. Microprocessors can be grouped into two general classes, namely general-purpose microprocessors and special-purpose microprocessors. General purpose microprocessors are designed to be programmable by the user to perform any of a wide range of tasks, and are therefore often used as the central processing unit (CPU) in equipment such as personal computers. A microcontroller, or embedded controller, is similar to a microprocessor as used in a personal computer, but with a great deal of additional functionality combined onto the same monolithic semiconductor substrate.
Special purpose microprocessors are designed to provide performance improvement for specific predetermined arithmetic and logical functions for which the user intends to use the microprocessor. A digital signal processor (DSP) is a special purpose microprocessor that performs computations which generally require large numbers of arithmetic operations to be performed rapidly. Digital signal processing is connected with the representation of signals by sequences of numbers or symbols and the processing of these signals. Microprocessors often employ the use of pipelining to enhance performance. With pipeline architecture, the tasks performed by a processor are broken down into a sequence of functional units referred to as stages or pipeline stages.
Superscalar microprocessors typically execute more than one instruction per clock cycle. Superscalar microprocessors allow parallel instruction execution in two or more instruction execution pipelines. The goal of superscalar and superpipeline microprocessors is to execute multiple instructions per microprocessor clock cycle. In a data processor, a clock signal is generated by a clock generating circuit and various circuit resources operate synchronously with the clock signal. In this way, various kinds of data processing can be executed.

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Intel Will Release New Technology on Monday

Intel is expected to release the next-generation chip for server systems on Monday,according to a report in The Wall Street Journal.

Known by its code name, Nehalem, the microprocessor has been acknowledged as a vital element in numerous tech companies’ upcoming products. Both Dell [DELL 10.15 0.32 (+3.26%) ] and Cisco [CSCO 17.07 0.22 (+1.31%) ] have announced their use of the chip in developing products. Other companies are not expected to announce their plans based on the Nehalem chip until Monday, the report said.

Results of performance testing of the chip have not been released, however, Intel [INTC 15.33 -0.12 (-0.78%) ] suggests that Nehalem is a significant enhancement of current similar products.

The company told the paper that the new product can save consumers money because it has greater support for virtualization software. This allows machines to run more efficiently, replacing a large number of older chips with one or two new ones, saving customers money on maintenance and electricity. Intel estimates that one Nehalem powered server could replace approximately nine other machines.

report from http://www.cnbc.com/id/29893114

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