The latest from Intel - The Core 2 Extreme QX9650
The newest high-end processor from Intel is the Core 2 Extreme QX9650. It is a quad-core chip running at 3 GHz produced on a 45 nanometer assembly line. It has a total of 12 megabytes of cache on the chip. Here is a complete review, including a summary of the 45 nm production process:
Penryn Arrives: Core 2 Extreme QX9650 Review
In this article they were able to boost the memory speed to 1600 MHz and overclock the chip to 3.6 GHz (a 20% increase) without any trouble, which bodes well for the speed of future chips.
Here are two other announcements:
- Intel’s 45nm Penryn/Yorkfield architecture packs serious punch
- Intel Core 2 Extreme QX9650 - Penryn Ticks Ahead
The Anandtech article talks about the future: “The other important item to note on the roadmap going forward is that top line in the table - yep, the one that says Bloomfield. Bloomfield is none other than Nehalem, the 45nm successor to Penryn. It’s a brand new architecture complete with an on-die memory controller, SMT (Symmetric Multi-Threading - 2 threads per core) and 8MB of shared cache (probably L3 shared among all four cores). While it’s still a year away, it’s very nice to see it on an Intel roadmap this far in advance of its launch.” That chip will probably crack the billion transistor barrier.
For more info see How Microprocessors Work
Ironic that a post describing the latest silicon is illustrated with an early ’70s IC. Ah, for the good ol’ days when electronics could be assembled by human fingers…
The illustration is an Intel 4004 microprocessor from 1971 - the first computer on a chip. It was a 4-bit processor, it had 2,250 transistors and it ran at 740 kHz. It used a 10,000 nanometer process and could do maybe 60,000 instructions per second.
Compare that to the latest and greatest, with over 800,000,000 transistors running at 3 Ghz using a 45 nm process. Today’s CPU is several million times more powerful than the 4004.