Intel shows off Sandy Bridge at IDF 2010

On Tuesday at the Intel Developer Forum held at China’s National Convention Center in Beijing, Intel executive Dadi Perlmutter shared information on Sandy Bridge, future microarchitecture that will succeed actual 45nm Nehalem and 32nm Westmere families. Sandy Bridge is being built on Intel’s second-generation High-K and Metal Gate 32nm technology, is Intel’s next generation architecture, which is targeted to enter production by late 2010.

In a first ever for Intel Corporation, it has both confirmed production of a new series of processors at the Intel Developer Forum, and even displayed a 32 nanometer process technology wafer of processors using the new Sandy Bridge architecture.

Rumored to enter mass production around 4Q 2010, processors using the new architecture should be ready for possible launch schedule in the first months of next year.

According to disclosed information, Sandy Bridge processors will be native sexa-core revisions, although the lineup will probably expand with a possible quad-core spin-off and native octo-core design for server/workstation market.

Similar to existing Nehalem and Westmere solutions, Sandy Bridge will be equipped with both HyperThreading technology and dynamic Intel Turbo Boost. However, there are also a few new introductions to the Sandy Bridge architecture:

As seen on Westmere-EP, Low Voltage DDR3 modules may make their way to this new platform, and native compatibility is expected to increase from todays 1333 MHz to 1600 MHz. The IMC [Integrated Memory Controller] will feature support for Quad Channel DDR3 with an estimated maximum capacity of 32 GB. This offers a significant performance increase, as current Westmere-based sexa-core, Core i7 980X comes with triple-channel memory controller which can yield up to 38.4 GB/s [using DDR3-1600]. With native support for DDR3-1600, Sandy Bridge processors will offer 51.2 GB/s of system memory bandwidth – an impressive feat.

Besides an upgraded IMC, PCI Express specifications have evolved from Generation 2.0 to Gen3. Just like PCI Express 2.0, the newer standard is designed with backward compatibility in mind. Bandwidth is expected to offer twice the amount of PCI Express 2.0, and at the same time the changed number of lanes would make for a lot of graphics possibilities for motherboard manufacturers.

In terms of the pin count of Sandy Bridge chips, the new processor series will encompass 2011 pads, i.e. probably having LGA-2011 added to their respective model numbers. Thermal Design Power stays within the current 130 Watt range of current LGA-1366 Core i7 processors.

Cooling of mainstream grade Sandy Bridge processors will be handled by the RCBF5 reference thermal solution as default fanned Heatsink, however, enthusiast ranged units may be bundled with similar coolers like we saw on the new sexa-core i7.

The ever increasing optimal contact for heat transfer also means that the LGA2011 package will make use of all four screw attachments for mounting onto a motherboard.

Future Extreme Edition Intel processors have addtionally been fitted with “Support for Overclocking,” i.e. feature unlocked processor core and memory ratios to help overclockers. Intel also has an overclocking utility in the works similar to Asus EvoV, Gigabyte EasyTune, etc.

Taking over from SSE is a new set of instructions dubbed AVX [Advanced Vector eXtensions]. According to sources in the know, AVX supposedly benefits intensive floating point calculations and boosts multimedia content as well as playback. On a final note Intel has announced an improved and more sophisticated power supply management system to improve on green energy emissions.

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Original Author: Thomas Jørgen Jacobsen

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