Intel combines 45nm and Hi-k in 16 new CPUs

Stephen Withers
Monday, 12 November 2007 08:18

Your IT - Home IT

A pair of technologies that boost performance by up to 20 percent and reduce power consumption by as much as 30 percent underpin the 16 new CPUs introduced today by Intel.

The introduction of the 45nm process means the same components can be fitted onto less silicon than is needed with the currently 65nm process. Alternatively, more can be crammed into the same space.

Although 45nm is roughly two-thirds of 65nm, the process reduces the area of each element on a chip by approximately half. Intel is using the process to cram up to 820 million transistors onto a single chip.

The smaller a given design can be made, the faster it can run and the less power is needed.

Power consumption in the new chips is also reduced by the use of the Hafnium-based high-k metal gate (Hi-k) formula developed by Intel. This material reduces the amount of electricity that leaks through the on-chip insulators. It takes the place of silicon dioxide.

The new chips were previously codenamed Penryn.

Most of the new CPUs are intended for server use. 12 quad-core Xeon processors are offered with clock speeds from 2GHz to 3.20GHz, with another three dual-core models running at speeds up to 3.40GHz. Prices range from $US177 to $US1279 in lots of 1000.

Accompanying chipsets support single and dual-processor configurations, as well as servers intended for high-performance computing applications. The new Xeons can also be used with the existing 5000 chipset.

The company has claimed several performance records for the new processor in various hardware and software configurations, including TPC-C, SAP-SD, SPECjbb2005, SPECint_rate2006, SPECfp_rate2006,  SPECOMP2001, VMmark, Fluent, LS-Dyna, and Abaqus.

Intel announced just one desktop chip using the 45nm process. The Core 2 Extreme QX9650 is a quad-core CPU running at 3.0GHz and intended for high-end gaming and media work. The 1000-off price of $US999 means it won't be turning up in budget PCs for a while.

Apart from the manufacturing technologies, the new processors feature the SSE4 instruction set (addressing video encoding, photo manipulation, high-performance computing and commercial applications), improvements to Intel Virtualization Technology, and a doubling of performance for division operations.