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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."
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.
"Simplify, simplify, simplify!" Thoreau
Rather than chasing clock speeds, Intel is focusing on lowering power consumption with its new architecture.
Exactly what we've all been waiting for. Is Intel Good(tm) now?
The Digital Couture Collection
Awesome. Now I'll be able to run 4 times as many CPUs with my 1000w PSU.
Ok, Conroe appears to be a lake in Texas, Merom is a bluff near the Wabash river in Indiana...where/what was the inspiration for Woodcrest?
http://www.anandtech.com/printarticle.aspx?i=2504X JsX3Jldmlld19JRD0xNTAy. php?dXJsX3Jldmlld19JRD0xNTA0. php?dXJsX3Jldmlld19JRD0xNTAz1 23.html
http://theinquirer.net/?article=25623
http://www.hexus.net/content/reviews/review.php?d
http://www.hexus.net/content/reviews/review_print
http://www.hexus.net/content/reviews/review_print
http://www.tomshardware.com/hardnews/20050823_133
Fundamentally, most markets of any age undergo specialization, niches form, and those most fitted to the niches, do best. But having a unified architecture between server / laptop / desktop flies in the face of that; it either claims there is no niche market anywhere, or that there is a "killer chip" which fits all niches better than anything else.
Now, I can guess what Intel would choose of those options, but is there something about the chip industry that makes it immune to this specialization idea? What am I missing?
In Soviet Russia, us are belong to all your base.
The screenshots make it look like Intel isn't including HT with this next gen core. Is that because it's likely the pipeline is shorter? I thought it would be uber-cool to have a dual-core CPU with HT for some awesome synthetic 4-core action. But, I guess the real question is: Should I care about HT anymore?
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.
Instead of Anand's pictures of PowerPoint slides, here's some actual info from TechReport:
"IDF -- On the heels of Intel's announcement of a single, common CPU architecture intended to drive its mobile, desktop, and server platforms, the company has divulged additional details of that microarchitecture. This dual-core CPU design will, as we've reported, support an array of Intel technologies, including 64-bit EM64T compatibility, virtualization, enhanced security, and active management capabilities. Intel says the new chips will deliver big improvements in performance per watt, especially compared to its Netburst-based offerings.
At 14 stages, the main pipeline will be a little bit longer than current Pentium M processors. The cores will be a wider, more parallel design capable of issuing, executing, and retiring four instructions at once. (Current x86 processors are generally three-issue.) The CPU will, of course, feature out-of-order instruction execution and will also have deeper buffers than current Intel processors. These design changes should give the new architecture significantly more performance per clock, and somewhat consequently, higher performance per watt.
Unlike Intel's current dual-core CPU designs, which don't really share resources or communicate with one another except over the front-side bus, this new design looks to be a much more intentionally multicore design. The on-die L2 cache will be shared between the two cores, and Intel says the relative bandwidth per core will be higher than its current chips. L2 cache size is widely scalable to different sizes for different products. The L1 caches will remain separate and tied to a specific core, but the CPU will be able to transfer data directly from one core's L1 cache to another. Naturally, these CPUs will thus have two cores on a single die.
The first implementation of the architecture will not include Hyper-Threading, but Intel (somewhat cryptically) says to expect additional threads over time. I don't believe that means HT capability will be built into silicon but not initially made active, because Intel expressly cited transistor budget as a reason for excluding HT.
On the memory front, the new architecture is slated to have the ever-present "improved pre-fetch" of data into cache, and it will also include what Intel calls "memory disambiguation." That sounds an awful lot like a NUMA arrangement similar to what's found on AMD's Opteron, but I don't believe it is. This feature seems to be related to a speculative load capability instead..
The server version of the new Intel architecture, code-named Woodcrest, will feature two cores. Intel is also talking about Whitefield, which has as much as twice the L2 cache of Woodcrest and four execution cores.
The company has decided against assigning a codename to this new, common processor microarchitecture, curiously enough. As we've noted, the first CPUs based on this design will be available in the second half of 2006 and built using Intel's 65nm fabrication process. "
Kaa
Kaa's Law: In any sufficiently large group of people most are idiots.
The problem is that the physics for how to increase the number of transistors on a chunk of silicon is very well understood and the physics of how to make better batteries is not.
To double the number of transistors on a processor is primarily a matter of lithography, that is etchich smaller and smaller lines into an existing wafer. Same materials, more or less, and same technique, more or less. With batteries, it's far more hit and miss.
The technology and fabrication process to make a lead-acid battery is vastly different than NiCd. NiMh is somewhat similar to NiCd, but then Lithium Ion is rather different and requires a lot more technology to make it work. Then you've got fuel cells as a possibility, and that's vastly different from anything I just described.
There's a lot of effort being put into battery research because everybody understands what a fundamental limitiation it is to everybody's dreams of pervasive wireless. It's rather ironic to describe these internet coffee shops as having "wireless" when you still have to have A/C power to do anything. The problem is that it does not have the clear and obvious path that CPU's have had.
I expect that fuel cells will eventually be the way to go. Still there's a certain inconvenience in them. If I want to charge my laptop batteries, i just plug in my laptop. If I've got a fuel cell, do I have to buy numerous cells? Do I have to fill them up with methanol, etc? It doesn't seem like there's a panacea for portable power (and other p words) anytime soon.
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... it clearly states that it combines the 64bit and netburst from the P4. M$ already told intel to fcuk off when it came to itanium 64bit. Hence EM64T that they have now which is compatible with AMD's implementation.
"combining the lessons learned from the Pentium 4's NetBurst and Pentium M's Banias architectures. To put it bluntly, the next-generation microprocessor architecture borrows the FSB and 64-bit capabilities of NetBurst and combines it with the power saving features of the Pentium M platform."
I have to wonder if Intel basically ditching the last 5 years of CPU development in favor of their Israeli skunkworks ranks at or above the famous Microsoft IE U-turn?
I mean, Intel sold millions and spent billions on Netbu(r|)st, and hit the wall far before the 5+ghz figures bandied about back in the day. This is basically ctrl-alt-del on a large part of their roadmap, though I'm sure they'll still be selling 'traditional' P4s for awhile.