Intel Corporation revealed several design features for the company’s 2011 2nd Generation Intel Core processor family at the Intel Developer Forum today.<\/p>\n
Codenamed “Sandy Bridge,” the new chips will be based on Intel’s first new “visibly smart” microarchitecture produced on the company’s manufacturing factories, or “fabs.”<\/p>\n
According to Intel, 32-nanometer (nm is a billionth of a meter) process technology with second-generation high-k metal gate transistors will be used.<\/p>\n
“The way people and businesses are using computers is evolving at an explosive rate, fueling demand for an even more powerful and visually appealing experience,” said Dadi Perlmutter, executive vice president and general manager of the Intel Architecture Group.<\/p>\n
The processor family will include a new “ring” architecture that allows the built-in processor graphics engine to share resources such as cache with the processor’s core to increase a device’s computing and graphics performance while maintaining energy efficiency.<\/p>\n
The 2nd Generation Intel Core processor also includes an enhanced version of Intel Turbo Boost Technology. This feature automatically shifts or reallocates processor cores and processor graphics resources to accelerate performance, tailoring a workload to give users an immediate performance boost when needed.<\/p>\n
Laptops and PCs powered by the 2nd Generation Intel Core processor family are expected to be available early next year. New Visual Experience<\/strong><\/p>\n Intel’s new processor graphics is set to deliver visual features focused on the areas where most users are computing today: HD video, 3-D, mainstream gaming, multi-tasking and online socializing and multimedia.<\/p>\n The 2011 chips also come with Intel Advanced Vector Extensions (AVX), Intel said.<\/p>\n According to Intel, AVX delivers improved performance, rich functionality and the ability to better manage, rearrange and sort data. A new 256-bit instruction set accelerates floating point intensive applications such as digital photo editing and content creation.<\/p>\n Intel says that they demonstrated Vidyo video conferencing software on a dual processor system build on a Xeon processor server that utilised the 32 threads available on the system and took advantage of the AES New Instructions set (AESNI).<\/p>\n The new Xeon processors for 2 socket servers and workstations run 8 cores and 16 threads per processor and are on schedule for production in the second half of 2011, Intel said.<\/p>\n
<\/strong><\/p>\n