Intel 45nm Fab Process Launched And Penryn Preview

NinjaKicks writes "Intel has decided to make public details of their new 45nm manufacturing process and also has broken news that next-gen Penryn core processors are running various versions of Windows and Vista successfully. Penryn will offer a host of core tweaks over Conroe, larger cache sizes, and SSE4 support. Also, although clock speeds will be increased, processors based on Penryn should fall within the same thermal power range as Conroe. Word is Penryn will also be compatible with some of the existing motherboards on the market while others will need either a BIOS update or perhaps other board-level changes."

Comments

Re:Still on the FSB

[RightSaidFred99]

Unfortunately (for your point) this has been proven wrong. The FSB works fine up to 2P machines. Intel will soon be quad FSB machines which should work very well for machines up to and including 4P/16Core. The proof is in the pudding, benchmarks show that the FSB limitation is only meaningful in a very few instances, and in most cases the superior uArch of Core2 more than makes up for it.

As for K8L, looks interesting - we'll have to see. If you think it's going to have a broad 40% improvement over Core2, though, I've got a bridge in Hanoi to sell you.

I have been convinced...

[Belial6]

I have been convinced for a long time that software bloat is not a problem. You touch on the reason. For the last decade, it has been cheaper to throw more hardware at a problem than it has been to optimize code. At some point in time, there will likely be a stall in speeding up hardware. When that happens we have a many years of continuing our computer speed ups via software optimizations. Heck, I know that I write inefficient code all the time. It is a simple cost/benefit choice. My clients do not want to pay tens of thousands of dollars to solve a problem that can be solved with $1000 worth of hardware. It's not that I couldn't optimize my code, and it's not that I wouldn't love to optimize my code. It's just the most companies don't want to pay for it.

Re:Is this a major breakthrough?

[wtarreau]

* ~2x improvement in transistor density, for either smaller chip size or increased transistor count
* ~30% reduction in transistor switching power
* >20%improvement in transistor switching speed or >5x reduction in source-drain leakage power
* >10x reduction in gate oxide leakage power
As a layman this sounds like a pretty massive improvement. Is this a major breakthrough or is this progress as usual?

While not a major breakthrough per se, it demonstrates intel's commitment to work on architectural evolutions again. They work both to improve the IPC (instructions per cycle) and the transistors quality, and that is a good thing. It's also written in the article that the layer are now deposited one atomic layer at a time. I believe that by demonstrating their skills in this area, they're improving our global knowledge and capabilities in microelectronics. The stupid GHz race has ended and smart people can express themselves again. Now that is a major breakthrough.

Willy

Re:IBM and Intel both a anounced major breakthroug

[edxwelch]

AMD will have a process with the low k thingy one year after Intel. I suspect IBM delibrately made their announcement on the same day to take the wind out of Intels sails, even though they're a year behind.