Performance Makes an Eco-Friendly Turn
Performance Makes an Eco-Friendly Turn
November 16, 2007: In keeping with the trend of ‘Moore’s Law,’ Intel has unveiled 16 server and high-end PC processors in Sydney, now putting eco-friendly innovation in the spotlight of computing performance.
Released as the ‘tick’ in the Intel ‘tick tock’ equation, the Intel Core 2 Extreme and Xeon processors will be manufactured on the company’s 45-nanometre process and complement the ‘tock’ that occurred last year with the latest silicon process technology using enhanced micro architecture released.
This two-year cycle makes Penryn the tick on the new 45nm process with ‘Nehalem’ delivering a new architecture next year as the ‘tock’
“The tick tock model is very significant in terms of an Intel investment,” said Tom Kilroy,” general manager of Intel’s enterprise group at the launch in Sydney. “Bringing advancements to the market is good but protecting the investment is also important.
It’s a massive investment that’s now seen the formula cracked, and one that will be further backed by Intel’s commitment to ramp up it’s capacity by unleashing to new microprocessor plants on the global market.
These plants, the size of 17 football fields each, will operate out of Israel and New Mexico in 2008 churning out the Intel goods as fast as the existing plants in Oregan and Arizona. It’s fair to question the ‘green’ validity of these giant, manufacturing hubs but Intel has at least eliminated the lead from its products and by 2008, plans to eliminate halogen materials used in it distribution.
With Intel boosting the stamp of approval from it’s co-founder Gordon Moore, who labels it the biggest transistor advancement in 40 years, Kilroy points out that it’s more then another process shrink.
“We always thought on the horizon Moore’s Law would live on, but back in the 90s some of our key developers noticed there were going to be problems,” he says. “The formula of Moore’s Law would hit a brick wall.”
That wall was the combination of leakage and unsustainable power consumption – a factor even more relevant today as IT becomes the hot point for ‘green’ investments. With the significant finding around a Hafnium-based high-k metal gate formula in 2003, Intel says the processors will allow them to continue delivering the outcomes of Moore’s Law in a more energy efficient way.
Combining the Hi-k formula advancement with the company’s 45-nanometre manufacturing process, Intel says it can now design products that are 25 percent smaller than their predecessors, more cost-effective and environmentally friendly, and able to pursue ‘system on chip’ opportunities like ultra mobile and consumer electronics.
Keeping in mind a nanometre represents one billionths of a meter, the 45nm processor has almost twice the transistor density of previous chips built on Intel’s 65nm technology, a feat that puts up to 820 million transistors on quad-core processors.
For the enterprise, this technology will see a family of 45nm server processors. Intel says 12 new quad-core chips boast speeds ranging from 2GHz to 3.2GHz with front size bus speeds up to 1600MHz and caches sizes of 12MB. Meanwhile the new dual-core chips will feature speeds up to 3.40Ghz, front side bus speeds of up to 1600MHz and cache sizes of 6MB.
Intel rival Advanced Micro Devics (AMD) is playing catch-up after commencing manufacturing 65 nanometre chips in early 2007 and preparing to lauch 45nm technologies next year.