Intel Reveals Next-Gen CPUs

EconolineCrush writes "Intel has revealed its next generation CPU architecture at the Intel Developer Forum. The new architecture will be shared by 'Conroe' desktop, 'Merom' mobile, and 'Woodcrest' server processors, all of which were demoed by Intel CEO Paul Otellini. Rather than chasing clock speeds, Intel is focusing on lowering power consumption with its new architecture. Otellini claimed that Conroe will offer five times the performance per watt of the company's current desktop chips. He also ran the entire keynote presentation on a Merom laptop, and demoed Conroe on a system running Linux."

Comments

Power concerns

[bigwavejas]

With Laptop sales "Surging" and technology growing exponentially, isn't it time to look at the batteries? You hear a lot about faster video cards/ CPUs and memory, but almost nothing about Next-Gen batteries. Battery technology hasn't really evolved at the same rate as other computer components, has it? I personally feel the bottleneck resides in the batteries and for the industry to progress (on a whole), they're going to have to take a look at all aspects.

Re:Power concerns

[Epistax]

I agree however I believe at least 50% of our battery life extension will come from developing ways to use less stored energy instead of storing more.

Re:Power concerns

[realmolo]

It's hard to improve batteries. You might as well ask "how come we don't have gasoline that gives us 100 mile per gallon in an average vehicle"?

Because there are physical limits to how much energy you can store in given materials. You can't "design around" these limits. All you can do is try and come up with better materials/better combinations of materials. And we've already tried every combination that is practical.

Which is why fuel-cell powered notebooks are interesting. But who knows if those will ever actually get produced.

Re:Power concerns

[Timothy Brownawell]

Yes it does. It doesn't change the polygons/second, but it give you more seconds, so more total polygons.

Tim

Now we know...

[wvitXpert]

So this is what Steve was talking about.

Re:Now we know...

[Harbinjer]

Hmmm.... did you notice in the slides it was all integer performance/watt? They never told us actual absolute performance, and never floating-point performance. My inner geek tells me there is much hype and little solid evidence of anything.

Re:Good

[GamblerZG]

Is Intel Good(tm) now?
No, they just reached the limits of silicon technology. Increasing performance any further would require eather designing "smarter" (rather than faster) processor or using multiple cores.

Anyway, the trend is good indeed. Finally, people will start thinking about performance on the level of software.

Transmeta was there first

[Vengeance]

It's been YEARS since Transmeta began preaching performance/watt, and it looks like right now, when Transmeta has some big contracts (with Sony, Microsoft, Fujitsu, etc) beginning to pay off, Intel finally figures it out.

Of course, Transmeta's already GOT the technology to cut leakage by tremendous amounts... Given that they are no longer a direct competitor of Intel's, it would make some sense if Intel simply licensed Transmeta's LongRun2 tech. But what do I know? I'm always foolishly choosing the better technology instead of the better marketing.

Re:Transmeta was there first

[megalomang]

Of course, Transmeta's already GOT the technology to cut leakage by tremendous amounts... Given that they are no longer a direct competitor of Intel's

Yeah, they have it. Their approach is a bit like this:

0) Preach, preach, preach about performance/watt
1) IPO
2) Deliver low power
3) Performance sucks a big donkey (i.e. fail to deliver)
4) Fail to hit your market and go out of business (i.e. no longer a direct competitor of Intel)

...it would make some sense if Intel simply licensed Transmeta's LongRun2 tech.

LongRun2???? You mean pay money for something that does not exist and is not proven and is already a generation behind the competition. That would be suicide.

But what do I know?

Precisely. Have a seat please. The adults are talking.

So much for Moore's Law

[SiliconEntity]

So much for Moore's Law. So much for the supposedly inexorable march of technology. So much for that nonsense about increasing CPU performance, you all didn't really want 4 GHz anyway, did you?

People have been predicting the demise of Moore's Law for years. It's funny that it's happened and nobody seems to notice.

Re:So much for Moore's Law

[Aadain2001]

Intel engineers came out years ago and stated that they will be hitting the physical wall by 2010, if not sooner. And this isn't the 'we don't know how to get light any smaller' wall, it's the 'the gate is an atom thick' wall. Once you get that small, that's it, you can't get smaller using atoms. You'd have to goto subatomic particles to get smaller, which is a completely different ballgame.

And if anything, the battle between AMD and Intel should have taught everyone here on Slashdot that faster speed does not mean faster performance. There are MANY factors in architecture design that will improve or decrease overall performance. Sure, you can have a 4GHz CPU, but if it's cycles per instruction (CPI) is 100 while a 2GHz CPU has a CPI of 20, the 2GHz CPU will actually be FASTER than the 4GHz chip! Intel knows this, AMD knows this, and everyone who does serious computer design work knows this. Intel chose the wrong path with Netburst and they have known it for years. But you can't turn around one day, snap your fingers, and switch to another architecture company wide. It takes time, hard work, and a lot of people, which is why we are only seeing this change now and not back in 2002 like they would have wanted.

I'm happy with this change and I think playing with the architecture to get better CPI and instructions per cycle (IPC) is a better way to go than just cranking up the clock speed.

power saving servers

[ndansmith]

I am glad to see that Intel is addressing power consumption with the server chip Woodcrest. After all, desktops and laptops are small potatoes compared to servers when it comes to power usage. For corporations with large server implementations, I could see this saving a lot of power (=$). Good move for Intel; lower power bills are good leverage for new technology purchases -- many of us used that same argument to upgrade from CRTs to LCDs. It is nice to finally have something to be excited about from Intel again.

Re:Good

[Dorsai42]

You left out the most important rule:

You cannot rely on anything you read here.

Power Consumption

[Botia]

This is something Intel needs to do to stay in the CPU market. Their NetBurst architecture has allowed AMD to capture the hearts of the enthusiests as it is a better processor. (Note: the mass market has many other factors besides which processor is best in determining sales.)

While I currently favor AMD's processors, The Pentium M is a magnificant piece of hardware. With Intel basing their future processors on the Pentium M they are going to give AMD a run for their money. This will force AMD to drop their prices to a more reasonable level.

The one thing Intel is doing that IMHO is wrong is changing the definition of performance from clock speed to performance/watt. This tells us nothing of the performance of the processor or the power required to run it. Instead we should have two basic measurements for all processors: performace and power consumption. Most people are able to do simple calculations such as division on their own or with a calculator. The is no need to hide the actual performance from the end users.

Re:Something other than x86

[stienman]

Finally! We move on from x86. We have advanced beyond 20 year old technology.

That's a bit like saying, "Finally! We move on from English. We have advanced beyond centruries old technology."

The X86 is just a language. No recent processor actually uses it raw. There may be some inefficiencies in the language itself, but the most significant have been reduced by extensions and smart compilers which avoid those constructs. The remaining inefficiencies are worth the backwards compatability, but they are minimal anyway.

A lot of people keep complaining about this "ancient" instruction set, but the reality is that it doesn't matter at this point. Even low-level drivers are being written in C due to fast processors and infinite storage space.

Yeah, sure, it would be nice to move to another instruction set, but previous efforts have failed. Intel's 64 bit chip requires a monstrously complex compiler, but it's wicked fast/efficient. But the P4 has surpassed it with it's "inefficient, outdated, and clunky" instruction set.

There's so much momentum on the X86 caravan that to develop something else and surpass the caravan is a hurculean task. Currently it is more effective to improve the architecture that runs X86 than it is to make a new instruction set and try to improve the architecture at the same time. (which is required since just changing the instruction set won't advance the performance enough to compete with the X86 that comes out when you're ready to release)

-Adam

Re:Now that Apple has joined the Intel bandwagon .

[TheRaven64]

Yeah! Go AMD! Surely the, as a member of the Trusted Computing Platform Alliance (TCPA) won't implement hardware DRM. It's just Intel who, as a member of the Trusted Computing Platform Alliance implemented the TCPA specification. And Apple clearly moved to Intel just to get access to this, because we know that IBM, as a member of the Trusted Computing Platform Alliance, would never have implemented it in their chips.