Sep

19

Stunning Announcements from Intel IDF

Filed Under Microprocessor, Process Technology | Leave a Comment



The much anticipated 3 days Intel Developer Forum from 18-20 Sep is currently held at San Francisco, Moscone Center West, US. On the first day, Intel has already made a series of stunning announcments:

  • Launch the 45nm processors using high-k metal-gate process on the 12 November. These include 130W Core 2 Extreme QX6850, a four-core part running at 3GHz on a 1333MHz frontside bus and with 12MB of L2 cache on board, with 6MB shared by each core pair (Ref).
  • Ramp up its microprocessors using a 32-nanometer process technology starting in 2009 (Ref).
  • Introduce 15 new 45-nm processors by the end of 2007 and 20 in the first quarter of 2008.
  • First public demonstration of the 8-core Nehalem processor using its QuickPath Interconnect system architecture. Although the design of Nehalem has been completed, they will most like ship in 2009.
  • In response to AMD’s Fusion chip, Intel will ship its integrated cpu+gpu chip in 2008. (Ref)

For more information and analysis on Intel IDF, check out the Anantech website. Anantech folks always surprise me by their in-depth and first-hand analysis of semiconductor industry and products.

Podtech.com is also tracking the Intel IDF closely. It is publishing a series of videocasts and podcasts almost live from IDF. Watch some of there here:

Related posts

Feb

13

Powerful AMD Quad-Core Processor Unveiled in ISSCC 2007

Filed Under Emerging Technology, Microprocessor, PC Industry | 1 Comment

With the impending launch sometime in the 2nd quarter of this year, AMD has unveiled more details on its powerful quad-core Opteron processor in the ISSCC 2007 held in San Fransisco 11-15 Feb. It certainly hopes that the new Opteron processor will gain a market share of ~40% in the server market. What is interesting is that the quad-core processor is offering the same power envelopes (68W, 98W, and 120W) as today’s dual-core CPUs despite doubling its number of cores. This amazing feat is achieved through innovative chip designs such as allowing each of the four cores to operate at four varying clock speeds, independent of one another and depending on load, along with other proven energy-saving technique such as clock-gating. Another piece of good news is that the new quad-core Opteron will use the socket F. So, companies can simply replace their current socket F dual-core Opterons with the new processor, without having to worry about design or heat issues. Other details unveiled are:

  • each core has its own 512k L2 cache and a shared 2MB L3 cache
  • nearly 450M transistors
  • fabricated using 65nm SOI CMOS process with dual stress liners and embedded SiGe
  • 11 Cu interconnect and ultra low-k dielectric

On the other hand, Intel is still keeping mum about their quad-core processor development. Instead the company revealed a new architecture for its dual-core processor, Merom, that will serve as the foundation of its future multi-core processors. However, Intel again wows everyone with its awesome 80-core superchip that claims to deliver supercomputer-like performance and Teraflop (trillions of calculations per second) capability. Amazingly, the 80 cores are communicated through very advanced Si-based optical connection technology. Although this is still very much at the R&D stage, going by the rate of core multiplying, maybe one day we will have hundred of cores in one chip at your desktop.

Related posts