Intel Penryn: first 45-nm processors
For the first time in the history of semiconductor industry,
Intel today has officially introduced processors made following the
45-nm process technology. Merely a year has passed since Intel's
demonstration of the first engineering samples of 45-nm SRAM memory,
and now we see a new milestone to come: processors of the working name Penryn
which comprise hundreds of millions of transistor gates made following
the complex and "delicate" 45-nm process technology where the width of
each transistor gate is as little as 35 nm.
Following the tradition, the announcement of CPU prototypes
means that the production lines are in theory ready for wholesale
manufacture - what is left is only a few verification arrangements and
polishing of the equipment to the optimum chip yield. Afterwards, later
to the summer a production of next-generation multicore Intel Core 2
Duo, Intel Core 2 Quad and Xeon processors will start, and their mass
deliveries are planned for the second half of 2007.
Photo of 45-nm CPU Intel Penryn
Intel's roadmap of CPU micro architectures and CPU designs
Today's even should be viewed from all the sides at a time due
to a number of reasons. First, the 45-nm process technology was used in
practice for the release of so complicated products. There have been of
course serious modifications to the production technology as well as
entirely new tools and materials at almost all the stages.
Secondly, transition to the so highly precise process
technology with the evident change in physical and chemical properties
of the circuit components called for use of absolutely new materials
and technologies to handle the substrates, creation of transistor
junctions, their electrodes etc. – whatever to attain lower
leakage currents and more economical operation of the chip without the
drop of performance per watt of energy spent.
Thirdly, the Penryn architecture of the CPU core has changed
although they still are representatives of the Core (Merom) micro
architecture. To avoid the mess of terms, we should recall that
generations of CPU micro architectures change one another less
frequently than various designs of cores (and even less frequently than
new process technologies). For example, the NetBurst micro architecture
which in 2000 came to replace the P6 micro architecture (the latest
representatives of P6 are 0.18 mk Coppermine and the final 0.13 nm
Tualatin in 2001) was in different times represented by a number of
different core designs: Willamette (2000, 0.18 mk, 0.13 mk), Northwood
(2002, 0.13 mk), Prescott/Smithfield (2004, 90 nm) and Cedar
Mill/Presler (2006, 65 nm) – four generations of core design
and six years on the same micro architecture!
At the same time, the Banias micro architecture presented in
2003 and which was progressing in parallel also contained a few
generations of core architecture generations – Banias (2003,
0.13 mk), Dothan (2004, 90 nm), and Yonah (2006, 65 nm).
In fact, the emergence of new CPU core designs can be regarded
as a gradual process of improvement within the same micro architecture
with the addition of new features, redesign and scaling to a new
process technology. At the same time, it turns out that Intel, due to
two master scientific research centers working at the processor
development – in Oregon and Israel, is developing and
improving at least two micro architectures in parallel thus making use
of the best practices of colleagues and getting rid of repeated errors.
The modern Core architecture which came in 2006 to replace the
NetBurst and Banias, along with absolutely new engineering ideas and
technologies, has inherited the best of the predecessors' experience.
As a result, the very first design of the core having the working name
Merom (2006, 65 nm) based on the Core micro architecture proved really
successful in terms of performance and efficiency.
Today's novelty, the design of core of the working name Penryn
is nothing more than the improved design of Merom with a simultaneous
transition to the 45-nm process technology. The family of 45-nm Penryn
chips will be the framework for new Core dual-core Wolfdale chips and
4-core Yorkfield chips which come to replace today's 65-nm Core 2 Duo
and Core 2 Quad, respectively. Therefore, the processors of Penryn
family will underlie the new generation of the mobile platform Intel
Centrino codenamed Montevina. The new mobile platform Montevina which
is expected in the first half of 2008 will replace the Santa Rosa
version.
To sort out with the micro architectures of Intel processors
and CPU core designs released on their base, let's look into the
future. It is expected that the newly presented design of Penryn along
with the Core micro architecture will survive for quite a long time
– perhaps until 2010, and it is quite possible the processors
with the Penryn core will be produced following the next, 32-nm,
process technology.
For now, we are not talking about the new versions of core
designs based on the Core micro architecture, since next year (2008) we
expect the announcement of an entirely new micro architecture of
Intel's processors – Nehalem, based on which 45-nm processors
of the same name Nehalem will be released closer to year 2009 , as well
as Nehalem-C chips of the modified design. Further forecasts are still
vague, but if everything goes as planned, then by 2010 we will see the
first prototypes of chips built on the absolutely new micro
architecture Gesher, and we only have to guess which process technology
– 32 nm or 25 nm - will be used.
Penryn CPU architectural specifics
Anyway, let's come back to Penryn processors based on the Core
micro architecture: according to the official statement of Intel's
representatives, the company is currently offering five products of
earlier steppings aimed at various sectors of the market- over 15 chips
planned for the forthcoming release following the 45-nm process
technology. According to the company's statements, Penryn chips are
already under trial runs in systems powered by Windows Vista, Mac OS X,
Windows XP, and Linux.
As per the practical experience (or maybe the tradition?)
acquired during the release of first chips of the Core micro
architecture, the Penryn family will include desktop and mobile PCs,
workstations and corporate systems.
We'll be considering the technology changes that touched upon
the manufacturing process and materials used later, but for now let's
list the innovations implemented in the Penryn processors. Among them
is the increased number of transistors – over 410 mln for the
dual-core design (291 mln transistors in 65-nm dual-core Conroe) and
over 820 mln for the quad-core Yorkfield, with the chip area reduced to
110 mm2 (from 143 mm2 in Conroe). That's where we see preservation of
the Moore's Law according to which the quantity of transistors is
doubled once every two years, with the unit cost of manufacture per
single transistor going down and the performance going up, and in the
near future - I am sure - we can ascertain the doubling of CPU cores on
a chip, why not?
Along with that, the Penryn family of CPUs will support for up
to 50 new Intel SSE4 instructions aimed at the increase of capabilities
and performance of handling the multimedia content. In this regard, it
is interesting to note that support for a number of new SSE
instructions was announced still for Conroe processors, however at IDF
Fall 2006 the support for SSE4 was reserved for the next generation of
micro architecture, Nehalem. As is stated in the press release, Penryn
will support for the new Intel SSE4 instruction set.
Among the new chips there will be versions of L2 cache size up
to 12 MB, and in general the whole family will differ in increased
performance and advanced capabilities of controlling the power
consumption modes. As to the power consumption of new 45-nm Core 2 Duo,
Core 2 Extreme, Core 2 Quad, and Xeon processors based on the Penryn
core, it is already known that the TDP will be approximately matching
to today's realities – about 35 W in chips for notebooks,
about 65 W in the mainstream chips for desktop PCs, about 80 W in
4-core server processors and chips for extreme gamers, under increased
performance.
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