Expect faster and more energy efficient Core 2 and Xeon processors in the second half of 2007. Intel has announced that it will start producing processors using its new Penryn microarchitecture, which will allow it push processor speeds to over 3 GHz.

And in the 2008, Intel plans to use its Nehalem microarchitecture to produce even quicker processors.

This is all part of Intel’s “tick-tock” product strategy to deliver process technology with an enhanced microarchitecture or entirely new microarchitecture every year.

Intel will use the Penryn architecture in six families of processors, including dual and quad-core desktop processors and a dual core mobile processor, 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.

According to Intel, these new processors benefit from enhancements to the Intel Core microarchitecture and also Intel’s 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.

To give you an idea of what this means, the 45nm next-generation Intel Core2 quad-core processors will have 820 million transistors. The original Pentium chip had 3 million transistors.

The Penryn processors will include up to a 50% larger L2 cache. Dual-core Penryn processors will feature up to a 6MB L2 cache and quad-core processors up to a 12MB L2 cache.

The mobile Penryn processor will have a new power management state called Deep Power Down Technology, which is said to significantly reduce the power of the processor during idle periods such that internal transistor power leakage is no longer a factor. This should help extend battery life in laptops.

Support for virtualization has also been improved. Penryn is said to speed up virtual machine transition (entry/exit) times by an average of 25 to 75%. This is all done through microarchitecture improvements and requires no virtual machine software changes.

Intel is already planning a  new microarchitecture for 2008, which it has codenamed Nehalem, and which will be dynamically scalable for ”performance on demand” and design scalable for “optimal price/performance/energy efficiency in each market segment”.

“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,” said Intel.

Related:

Entry was posted on Thursday, March 29th, 2007 at 11:40 am under Intel, Science and technology.

Read more entries by John Pospisil.
Stumble It!