Mark Gilbert’s Blog

Well here I go, all the stuff I can get on Intel’s new processors. Read it a few times if you can’t follow it all at once and there are some nice tables containing processors at the end. I’ve only mentioned the major ones though but they are all listed in the tables at the end.

First off the new badges.
I should point out that this information is still confidential and could be adjusted a bit over time. I spoke to someone who is privy to these things, and I was told that I hadn’t been shown what I was about to see.

Intel’s new processors will be based on the 65 nm Merom design and intel intends to deliver almost 20 new processor designs within the next 4 years. From the looks of things they really do intend to dominate all the sectors, including desktop, laptop and enterprise.
So the futures bright, the futures Intel so it would seem. There will be lots of dual cores, quad cores and even the first eight core CPUs to look forward to, all coming out in these next 4 years.

I mentioned the Yonah Cores in my bit about dropping the Pentium name, so the core will not be a supprise. But read on, there’s much more. Instead of being called Pentium M the chips will simply be called “Core” witht he suffix “Solo” or “Duo” denoting the number of cores on the chip.

Yonah1 is a single core chip that will be the next in-line to the mobile market, currently held by the Pentium M Dothan. The Dothan is being used in a hell of a lot of notebook designs today from a multitude of manufacturers. There will be vesions with either 1 MB or 2 MB L2 cache.
The Yonah2 then, unsuprisingly is the dual core chip which will only be available with 2 MB L2 cache. All Yonah type processors will be pin-compatible and available within three different voltage versions, regular, low voltage or ultra-low voltage in order to meet different requirements of laptop designs.
The Yonah2 is going to be marketed to the server space as well, but under a different name. Sossaman as it will be called will come in a different package to the laptop chips so it’s compatible with Intel’s Bensley platform. Speculation goes that it will be pretty hot in the low-power servers such as the various manufacturers blade servers, and thats hot in the sense of shit hot, not hot as in Prescott Core P4’s.
The final Yonah processor has not been mentioned officially. This one will be called Stealey. Stealey will be shipped a few months after the Yonah1 and Yonah2 processors. This one will be cut-down single core with 512 kB L2 cache only, very similar to the current Celeron processor. Obviously, this is going to be a budget processor for low-cost systems.

Moving on.
So far Intel has spoke out about three processor versions that are expected to be shipped towards the back-end of 2006. One of which called Woodcrest is not being mentioned anymore so looks likely to have been axed. Conroe will be the desktop processor to fit the exisitng Socket 775. It will have two cores and a share 4 MB L2 cache between the cores. This is derived from the processor design that is currently refered to as Merom.
All chips based on the Merom design will use a 65 nm fabrication process and are expected to outperform the competition both in pure speed and pure speed per Watt.

The introduction of the Merom based processors will be a major landmark in Intel’s product design policy, because it will be the foundation of all the Intel processor families used in all machines, desktop, mobile and enterprise. This stands in contrast to the current set-up, the desktop and enterprise markets are provided with Pentium 4 and Pentium D, with their NetBurst architecture while the mobile processors are based on the far more efficient Pentium M design which is itself based on the old Pentium 3.

Besides the processor designs that have already been mentioned there will be two more versions. The desktop processor called Allendale is a stripped-down dual core processor coming with only 2 MB L2 cache. This processor is expected to be available a couple of months after Conroe.
Later on, Intel is going to release even more Merom based products, but these will be cut-down again. Millville will be a single core with 1 MB L2 cache only, so really half an Allendale chip which sounds very similar to the current desktop Celeron processors.

The big thing to look forward to for next xmas, to go with your new Vista OS will be a physical quad core processor. Although these are not going to be on a single processor die. It will be called Kentsfield and is expected to hit the market in early or mid 2007. It may ship early though, we can only hope. This is aimed at the market the current Smithfield chips occupy hence the similar name.
As would be expected, a quad core processor with large ammounts of L2 cache would increase the transistor count and so the die size a lot , so in order to avoid low yields from the 300mm wafers, Kentsfield is referred to as coming in a “multi chip package”. This enables Intel to fit two or even more processor dies into a physical package while being able to select the particular parts beforehand. So maybe 2 cores per chip in 1 physical package to cut costs. Not quite the full quad core chip but close.
There will also be a server version of this dual core processor, code named Clovertown. Again it’s a 4 MB L2 cache package with multi-chips.
One thing I have heard though is that these processors are ready to go, they just need to be made.

The final chip on Intel’s 65 nm roadmap is named Whitefield. This will be a server product with an impressive 8 or 16 MB of L2 cache and four Merom architecture type cores on a single piece of silicon.

The next generation of processors after these ones are still going to be based on the processor design that Merom is going to introduce in 2006, but due to a couple of modifications in addition to a die size shrink to 45 nm it will be called Penryn. The cache size will be increased by 50%, resulting in cache sizes of 3 MB and 6 MB L2 cache for the dual core processor versions.

The current Pentium D 800 series, which is based on the Smithfield processor is going to be replaced by the 65 nm Presler and will be marketed as Pentium D 900 in early 2006, while making the two cores into two physical chips inside the package at the same time.
While Intel is going to do the same thing in order to put together the quad core Kentsfield processor, it is still going to be a 65 nm descendant. The 45 nm Penryn is going to be the foundation for two desktop processors called Wolfdale and Ridgefield. Wolfdale is going to be the 3 MB L2 cache desktop version of Penryn, while Ridgefield is reputed to have a total of 6 MB L2 cache.

The final orgasmic climax of Intel’s move to a 45 nm fabrication process will obviously be the real daddy processors with up to eight cores on a die. The Yorkfield and Harpertown cores are very similar to these 8 core chips, while Yorkfield moves into the desktop space and Harpertown heads for the enterprise. Both will be 45 nm chips, with four cores and up to 12 MB L2 cache.
The current standpoint is that four Wolfdale based chips with 3 MB L2 cache each could be welded together in order to realize the huge quad-core-super-daddy-better-than-superman chip. Or Intel could put two quad cores with 6 MB L2 cache each together to give the same effect.

65 Nm Processor Overview

45 Nm Processor Overview

Cheers

This entry was posted on Thursday, December 15th, 2005 at 00:44 and is filed under Hardware. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.