Intel Core Duo 2 and Core 2 Extreme microprocessors

The latest generation of Intel x86-compatible processor, Core 2 Duo microprocessor family, was introduced on July 27, 2006. The Core 2 Duo processors include two cores, each core having 32 KB L1 data and 32 KB L1 code caches, and both cores having shared 2 or 4 MB L2 cache. The Core 2 Duo CPUs run at lower frequency than Pentium 4 processors, but they offer excellent performance due to more efficient architecture:

• Each processor's core can execute up to 4 instructions per cycle.
• Shared L2 cache allows the same copy of data to be used by both cores. Another advantage of shared L2 cache is that more heavily loaded core can use bigger portion of L2 cache - up to the full size of the cache.
• 128-bit SSE instructions can be executed at sustained rate of one 128-bit instruction per cycle.

Core 2 Duo architecture includes other performance enhancing features. One of these features is a "macrofusion". This feature allows the processor to load and execute common instruction pairs as one instruction.

Overall, despite of lower processor frequency, the performance of Core 2 Duo family is much higher than the performance of Pentium 4. Lower processor speed of Core 2 Duo and Extreme processors also translates into lower power consumption. Core 2 Duo E6600 and E6700 processors have thermal design power 65 Watt (75 Watt for Core 2 Extreme x6800), while less efficient Pentium 4 Extreme Edition 3.73 GHz has thermal design power of 115 Watt.

Intel Releases New Laptop CPUs; Cuts Prices

September 10th, 2007

Intel released yesterday the new notebook processors and cut laptop CPU prices for up to 40 percent.

Along with the recently introduced Intel Core 2 Extreme X7900, the chip maker has added the Core 2 Duo T7800 model at 2.6GHz to its mobile processor price list. The T7800 costs $530, while the prices for the older T7700 and the T7500 are decreased from $530 and $316 to $316 and $241 respectively.

Intel also introduced the Core 2 Duo T7250 at 2GHz, which has the same specifications as the existing T7200, except the decreased front side bus from 800MHz to 667MHz. The T7250 is priced at $209 and is cheaper than T7200 for $85.

Regarding processors primarily designed for ultraportable laptops, the company released the ultra-low voltage Core 2 Solo U2100 and U2200 units, featuring clock speeds of 1.06 GHz and 1.2 GHz respectively. The U2100 and U2200 ULV CPUs have 1MB of L2 cache and use a 533MHz FSB. Unlike the other Core 2 processors, which have two CPU cores, the Core 2 Solo models have a single core. The U2100 and U2200 ULV chips have power consumption of 5.5W.

The changes have been also made in the low-cost Intel Celeron M laptop CPU line.

“The mobile Celeron M line was expanded with the 2GHz 550 and the 1.73GHz 530, in at $134 and $86, respectively. The existing 1.86GHz 540 saw its price call from $134 to $107, a drop of 20 per cent,” ChannelRegister reports.

The listed prices are per processor when sold in batches of 1000 units.

Asus Unveiled G1 and G2 Gaming Notebooks

Asus today announced the G1 and G2, the company’s “first two notebooks designed for mobile gamers”. The 15.4-inch widescreen Asus G1 and 17-inch widescreen Asus G2 feature the latest Intel Core 2 Duo processors. The G1 comes with NVidia GeForce Go7700 with 512MB of video memory, while the G2 ATI Mobility Radeon X1700 featuring 512 MB VRAM.

Based on Mobile Intel 945PM Express Chipset, the G1 and G2 feature 802.11a/b/g wireless, Gigabit Ethernet and an optional Bluetooth. Both laptops support up to 2GB of main memory. They are offered with up to 160GB SATA hard drive and with a DVD burner. For video conferencing there is built-in 1.3 mega-pixel webcam, mounted on the top of the laptop’s screen panel.

The Asus G1 and G2 gaming notebooks also feature some display design details such as OLED instant display, side/front speakers, hotkey highlights, and sidelights, the company’s press release says.

Can Nvidia Take The Chipset Crown?

Intel's Core 2 Duo processors have been available for about six months now, and the response has been very favorable for Intel. In fact, many people send us emails asking our views on the best platform for Core 2 Duo systems. Until now the answer has been an Intel chipset, but competition has emerged: Nvidia's nForce 680i SLI core logic wants to be the undisputed champion for Core 2 Duo processors. Of course, we wanted to know whether it really is or not...

First of all, we have to make very clear that although today's chipsets support varying features and target different user segments, you won't notice any difference in performance between a motherboard using a P965, 975X or nForce 680i SLI chipset when you start Windows to attend to your daily business. Only if you belong to the feature-aware, performance-hungry or overclocking-savvy crowds will you appreciate the huge overclocking margins and plethora of tweaking options.

Intel's P965 and 975X chipsets represent the establishment, both because most Intel-based systems are powered by Intel's very own chipsets, and because Intel processors have traditionally run best with an Intel chipset. Although the 975X has been available for over a year, it is still the high-end product - it is paired with the ICH7 southbridge, and thus offers a nice range of interface options. However, the P965 is the latest core logic product, utilizing the ICH8 southbridge family with even more goodies. There is a large variety of 965 and 975 motherboards available today.

Nvidia has been in the chipset arena since 2001. Although its first nForce chipset failed, the nForce2 and following generations were increasingly successful. Today, the nForce 4 and 5 series are considered among the best choices for Athlon 64 solutions, and Nvidia is hoping that the nForce 6 will give it a big share of the Intel market. It is the larger business space, but also more difficult to get into: Nvidia already tried its luck with the nForce 4 Intel Edition, but even though the product was great, it couldn't take significant market share from Intel.

The nForce 6 chipset is supposed to be better than the Intel chipsets in every way: better overclocking, better storage subsystem, better dual x16 PCI Express SLI graphics as opposed to Intel's dual x8 PCI Express Crossfire support, better networking support and better memory auto-configuration. Let's dig into this new chipset and find out if it delivers.

Inside Intel’s Penryn Processor

On Monday Intel announced the first mobile quad-core processor called Penryn. The new silicon is the cousin to the Penryn desktop processor, the Core 2 Extreme QX9650, announced on 12 November 2007.

The next generation transistors, used in the new Penryn processors (Intel Core 2 Duo, Intel Core 2 Quad and Xeon family) feature “new high-k + metal gate material that will allow for higher frequencies, lower resistance, less leakage and lower power consumption.”

Aside from the simple fact that the new 45nm process will allow for double transistor density over current generation processors, Intel also promises that the new microarchitecture will offer a significant performance-per-watt increase over current 65nm technology. Other benefits of the new 45nm process and high-k and metal gate combination will be:

• Significant reduction in transistor switching power
• Improvement in transistor switching speed
• Reduction in source-drain leakage power
• Reduction in gate oxide leakage power
• Greater energy efficiency

According to AppleInsider Penryn-based Core 2 notebook chips boost battery performance by as much as 16 percent and encoding operations by as much 40 percent over Merom processors in mobile benchmark tests.

Penryn is the successor to the fourth-generation Intel (Santa Rosa) Centrino notebook processor currently shipping in the current MacBook and MacBook Pro. Penryn chips have already started shipping PC notebooks from HP, Toshiba and Fujitsu.

The MacBook Pro was last updated on 5 June 2007 with the Santa Rosa processor and new NVIDIA GeForce 8600M GT 250 days ago. The MacBook was last updated just 72 days ago (on 31 October 2007) with Santa Rosa and Intel GMA X3100 video.

While the MacBook is still pretty current the MacBook Pro is due for a refresh. I’d love to see a new quad-core Penryn MBP announced at MWSF - ideally in an entirely new enclosure.

Intel confirms Centrino 2 brand

IDF It's official: Intel's 'Montevina' incarnation of Centrino will indeed be branded Centrino 2, as expected.

Up to the release of Montevina, due this coming May, there have been four versions of Centrino. But apart from briefly adding the word 'Duo' to the brand, Intel hasn't to date offered any clear indication to consumers that marked a new version of the platform from its predecessors.

That hasn't played well with notebook vendors and suppliers who have had to fall back on the chip giant's own codenames - 'Santa Rosa refresh', for instance - to differentiate one Centrino generation from another. Clearly, that doesn't tell buyers anything, and laptop makers have been crying out for a new approach that does.

Enter 'Centrino 2', using a simple version number in the tried and trusted way to show product A is generation X and product B is generation Y.

Montevina machines will go out under the Centrino 2 brand. Intel is planning to release some 15 45nm Core 2 Duo processors that tie into its 'Cantiga' chipset, the foundation of Montevina. Cantiga ups the platform's system bus speed to 1066MHz and adds support for DDR 3 memory. As before, Wi-Fi is part of the package, now augmented with WiMax as an optional extra.

Equally optional is the second generation of Intel's Flash cache Turbo Memory technology.....

Inside Intel's Santa Rosa platform

Inside Intel's Santa Rosa platform

At the heart of Intel's new mobile platform is the processor, chipset and wireless combination codenamed Santa Rosa. Business notebooks built on the Santa Rosa platform will be branded Centrino Pro, while consumer systems will carry the existing Centrino Duo branding. Intel has upgraded all three platform elements, in its continuing efforts to increase notebook performance while reducing power consumption. However, not all of the components are very different to their previous versions.
Intel's new Santa Rosa mobile platform includes upgrades to the processor, chipset and wireless modules, and adds new functionality such as Turbo Memory.


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Processor

The processor has changed the least. It's a 65nm Merom-based Core 2 Duo with a few tweaks, and will be the last of these CPUs before the arrival of 45nm Penryn processors in the next update. The major change between Santa Rosa's processor and its predecessors is the acceleration of the frontside bus (FSB) from 667MHz to 800MHz , together with the ability to slow it down during light loads. This technology, called Super Low Frequency Mode, knocks the bus speed down to 400MHz, the CPU's clock speed to 600MHz and reduces the core voltage. Another tweak, called Enhanced Deeper Sleep, means that the memory controller in the chipset won't wake up the processor to check on cache status if the system knows the cache is empty and the CPU is sufficiently comatose not to be able to change things.

A rather unusual performance boost comes in the form of Enhanced Dynamic Acceleration Technology. The Santa Rosa processor can run one of its two cores at full tilt while the other is in one of a number of sleep states, at which time the total thermal energy is somewhat less than the maximum allowed when both cores are running. Under conditions where only one core is running, Intel can effectively overclock it, taking advantage of the increased thermal headroom left by the other core ticking over. This will give single-threaded tasks a boost, says Intel, without risking overheating.
Turbo Memory, formerly code-named Robson, is a NAND flash hard disk cache that's designed to reduce boot times, boost performance and conserve battery life.


More performance, and lower power consumption, comes from a flash-based hard disk cache called Turbo Memory. Previously codenamed Robson, this devotes 512MB or 1GB of NAND flash memory to holding system files and other data that the operating system requires at start-up, restoring from sleep or during application switches. Intel claims that with a suitable operating system — and Windows Vista is designed for this — Turbo Memory can more than halve application load and wake-from-sleep times, while adding up to twenty minutes to battery life. Like any cache, its performance can vary according to how it's used, the mixture of reads and writes and the nature of the data sets it handles. However, with luck and application, the advantages will increase as programmers learn how to write optimal code and as flash memory gets bigger and better.

Chipset

The chipset, codenamed Crestline and officially called the Mobile Intel 965 Express, includes a wide variety of enhancements to existing power-saving techniques plus some novel ideas, especially in display management. The Display Power Saving Technology (DPST) has been improved for better colour performance; this spots display contents that are primarily dark and lightens the pixels while dimming the backlight. Display Refresh Rate Switching and interlace support reduces LCD panel performance when the system is running on batteries and when display content allows it. Other systems turn off or reduce the speed of the LAN and various peripheral connections when operating conditions permit. The whole combination can save between two and three watts of power, which results in around five to ten percent extra battery life. The graphics themselves are provided by the GMA X3100 graphics core, which has eight 32-bit floating-point execution units clocked at 667MHz, hardware shading and support for Vista's Aero graphics. However, the GMA X3100 doesn't support DirectX 10 yet.
The Active Management Technology in the Centrino Pro platform can use wireless connectivity, which potentially extends the reach of the IT manager to the mobile workforce.


Another new feature in the chipset is support for Intel's Active Management Technology (AMT). This has been part of the vPro business platform for a while, but has been updated for Santa Rosa. This out-of-band management support is in effect an entire separate computer with its own connection to the network, with the ability to operate even when the main processor isn't running. By giving support software access to system components when the system as a whole has crashed or is otherwise engaged, AMT helps remote diagnostic and repair efforts. The Santa Rosa version of AMT, 2.5, has the ability to use wireless networking for the first time, although limitations in how public networks are configured mean you won't necessarily be able to get IT support to fix your notebook when you're out in the field with a blue screen of death.

To qualify for the new business-focused Centrino Pro branding, a system must include Intel's AMT 2.5 firmware and an AMT/VT-capable BIOS, in addition to the other Santa Rosa platform elements. Consumer notebooks, which don't require these manageability features, will continue to be branded as Centrino Duo.

Wireless

The wireless network card in Santa Rosa, codenamed Kedron but now dubbed the Wireless WiFi Link 4965AGN, includes Intel's take on the long-delayed 802.11n standard. You can expect throughput of between 200Mbps and 300Mbps — with the appropriate wireless system on the other end, of course — but as for long-term compatibility with the finished standard, interoperability with other Draft-N systems, power consumption issues and mutual interference with 802.11b and g users within range, only time will tell.
The Intel Wireless WiFi Link 4965AGN supports the Draft-N wireless networking standard, delivering throughput up to 300Mbps.


Pricing

Prices vary from $209 for the T7100 processor with 2MB of cache and 1.8GHz clock speed to $530 for the 2.4GHz 4MB T7700. The Mobile Intel 965 Express chipset is $39 or $43, depending on configuration; the Wireless WiFi Link 4965AGN costs $29; and Turbo Memory ranges from $13 to $21, according to whether the manufacturer buys the components or the complete module, and whether they plump for 512MB or 1GB. All of these prices are for 1,000-unit deals (see the following page for the full pricing details).

Roadmap

There's a planned refresh to Santa Rosa due in the first half of 2008, which will see the introduction of a Penryn-based 45nm processor followed by a complete new Centrino platform codenamed Montevina. This will include the Cantiga chipset, WiMAX and Wi-Fi wireless (Echo Peak), a gigabit LAN interface (Boaz) and the next generation of Turbo Memory (Robson 2.0). Details on Montevina remain sketchy, but the Penryn architecture will include yet further ways to drop the processor into still deeper sleep states on the most abstemious trickle of power.