California-based Intel Corporation has this week revealed that its next-gen Penryn processors will move into full production in the second half of 2007. The leading player in the chip market has also taking the opportunity to sketch in the new Nehalem chip architecture, which is tentatively scheduled for a 2008 unveiling.
Coming in the latter part of 2007, Intel will roll out six new Penryn chips, all of which will be issued in dual-core and quad-core editions. Intel also claims that the processors will benefit from the application of its new 45nm (nanometre) Hi-k technology, which is said to deliver improved performance and better energy efficiency, while the Intel Core microarchitecture will also provide implemented enhancements.
Elaborating on the micoarchitecture tweaks, Intel has outlined that the new Penryn chips will usher in processor speeds of over 3GHz (for desktops and servers), new SIMD extensions (SSE4), boosted performance via Dynamic Acceleration Technology for single-threaded applications, increased instruction executions on each clock cycle, improved virtualisation, expanded on-chip caches, and prolonged battery life for mobile devices.
The full Penryn line-up will see the arrival of dual-core and quad-core processors for desktop systems, a dual-core mobile processor, and also dual-core and quad-core Xeon chips for servers. Intel has also tantalisingly lifted its corporate skirt on a further chip, which, while the chipmaker opted not to divulge its specifics, is presently under construction specifically for upper-tier server systems.
In terms of technical stats, Intel’s next-generation Penryn chips are expected to enhance bus speeds to upwards of 1600MHz, while also delivering as much as a 50 percent improvement in L2 cache beside that of Intel’s existing Core 2 processors. The dual-core chips will arrive featuring a maximum of 6MB of L2 cache, while the quad-core versions will hold as much as 12MB. Intel’s Hi-K technology will see the new Penryn range equipped with an unprecedented 820 million transistors even though their overall physical sizing will be reduced thanks to the implementation of 45nm technology.
Furthermore, Intel has announced that more than fifteen 45nm Hi-K designs are presently in development, and that two 45nm fabrication facilities will be running before the close of 2007, with another two in position around the close of Q2 2008.
Beyond the close-at-hand attraction of the new Penryn processors, Intel has also revealed that its Nehalem architecture will be rolled out in 2008 to continue the chipmaker’s yearly unveiling of a fresh process technology with enhanced or entirely new microarchitecture. The Nehalem microarchitecture is being positioned to deliver enhanced management throughout cores, threads, cache, interfaces, power, and simultaneous multi-threading, while also utilising Intel’s new SSE4 and architecture improvements to the ATA instruction set.
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