8 Core Chips

[Bubba Grizz]

As most of you probably know, AMD has developed the first 8 core CPU. The price for the top end of these chips is about $250 which is around the same price as a low end Sandy Bridge. Has anyone seen any benchmark comparrisons for AMD's new chip to any Intel chip yet?

[masteen]

Isn't Win7 limited to 6 processor cores?

[Leonaerd]

It's difficult for a consumer to utilize four cores as it is. Let it age for a while, maybe.

Isn't Win7 limited to 6 processor cores?

Go Linux! There's a PDF out there called Linux Multi-core Scalability... Basically talks about future-ready Kernel goodness.

[Aslanna]

Cores don't matter much to me. I don't even use all the ones I have now. I'm sticking with Intel!

[Winnow]

It's all about Tri-Gate transistors. Ivy Bridge processors will have them, AMD's wont.

Next Intel Chips Will Have the World's First '3D' Transistors

Intel will begin high-volume manufacturing of chips featuring the world's first three-dimensional transistor, the company said Wednesday.

"The gains these transistors provide are really unprecedented," said Bill Holt, senior vice president and general manager of Intel's technology Manufacturing Group at a press conference in San Francisco.

Intel will introduce its 3D transistor design, called Tri-Gate, as it transitions to its next-generation, 22-nanometer silicon manufacturing process at the end of this year and through 2012, Holt said. Tri-Gate transistors will be used in all of Intel's product lines, from high-end server chips to the tiny, low-power processors that go into mobile devices like smartphones and tablets, including the Atom embedded processor. The 3D transistor will be a standard part of Intel's 22-nm process, and its factories will be upgraded to support the new technology, executives said.

The first 22-nm chips are codenamed "Ivy Bridge" and are set for high-volume production before the end of 2011 with a scheduled product release early in 2012. Intel demonstrated working Ivy Bridge chips in a notebook, desktop and a dual-core, single-processor server at the San Francisco event.

What's a 3D transistor?

Although a traditional transistor is built three dimensionally, it operates in a "planar" fashion, moving electrons across two dimensions.

Tri-Gate transistors form conducting channels on three sides of a vertical "fin" structure, a major advance from the planar design of transistors in use for the past 50 years, the company said. The three-dimensional structure of the next-generation transistors allows chips to operate at lower voltage with lower leakage, Intel executives said.

In other words, the electrons go "up, left, and down," said Dadi Perlmutter, executive vice president and general manager for the Intel Architecture Group, at an event in San Francisco Wednesday.

Intel said its upcoming 22-nm chips will enjoy a 37 percent performance gain running at low power as compared with the company's current-generation 32-nm chips featuring planar transistors. The new chips also provide a 50 percent power reduction at constant performance, improved switching characteristics and a higher drive current for a given transistor footprint. "We've never achieved that any kind of performance gain on anyt previous technology," Bohr said.

What this means for your PC

What will this mean for the PC? Intel's second-generation Core i7 processors top out at 3.4 GHz, although some of Intel's server chips can run faster. Perlmutter said that the improved transistor will result in improved processor performance, although he declined to say whether clock frequency would be increased as a consequence. Users should also expect Intel's notebook chips to run at even lower power consumption at the same clock speed, potentially extending battery life further.

All those benefits do come at a price, though not a terribly steep one. Silicon wafers with Tri-Gate transistors will cost from 2 to 3 percent more to fabricate than traditional wafers featuring planar transistors, said Mark Bohr, an Intel senior fellow who spoke at the event.

Intel's 3-D Tri-Gate transistors enable chips to operate at lower voltage with lower leakage, providing an unprecedented combination of improved performance and energy efficiency compared to previous state-of-the-art transistors. The capabilities give chip designers the flexibility to choose transistors targeted for low power or high performance, depending on the application.

The 22nm 3-D Tri-Gate transistors provide up to 37 percent performance increase at low voltage versus Intel's 32-nm planar transistors. This incredible gain means that they are ideal for use in small handheld devices, which operate using less energy to "switch" back and forth. Alternatively, the new transistors consume less than half the power when at the same performance as 2-D planar transistors on 32-nm chips.

Intel first demonstrated a single-fin Tri-Gate transistor in 2002. Just shy of a decade later, the chip maker will introduce the first chips featuring its 3D transistor technology in a server chip due out before the end of the year.

Bohr said Intel could enjoy a three-year lead on competitors with its Tri-Gate transistors. Semiconductor manufacturers planning on introducing 3D transistor technology likely won't do so until they move past the 22nm process node to 14nm several years out, he said. Intel's Tri-Gate process is also extensible to the 14nm manufacturing node.

"This general structure is well known in the industry. But the challenge is to make it manufacture-able," Bohr said.

Executives at AMD deferred comment to their manufacturing partner, GlobalFoundries, which didn't have any immediate comment.

Intel's transition to 22-nm technology later this year will be the next milestone in the company's Moore's Law-driven march towards ever-smaller silicon transistors that boost the performance and efficiency of each new generation of microprocessors.

"For years we have seen limits to how small transistors can get," said Intel co-founder Gordon Moore, in a statement. "This change in the basic structure is a truly revolutionary approach, and one that should allow Moore's Law, and the historic pace of innovation, to continue."

Wait for Ivy in the beginning of 2012. Don't just throw more cores at the issue!

Expected Ivy Bridge feature improvements from Sandy Bridge:

Intel's tri-gate transistor technology, which will significantly reduce power consumption.

PCI Express 3.0 support.

Next Generation Intel HD Graphics with DirectX 11, OpenGL 3.1, and OpenCL 1.1 support. The built-in GPU is believed to have up to 16 execution units (EUs), compared to Sandy Bridge's maximum of 12.

Next Generation Intel Quick Sync Video.

The new random number generator and the RdRand instruction,[14] which is codenamed Bull Mountain.

While Ivy Bridge will be compatible with the Cougar Point chipset motherboards associated with Sandy Bridge, Intel will also release a new 7-series Panther Point chipset with Ivy Bridge. This chipset will have integrated USB 3.0

Ivy Bridge

Intel's performance targets (compared to Sandy Bridge):

20% increase in CPU performance.

Up to 60% increase in integrated graphics performance.

[Bubba Grizz]

All I'm seeing online is AMD getting blasted for taking so long to create something that doesn't even measure up to low-mid intel chips.

I'm a bit disappointed.

Oh well. I don't think I can wait for the Ivy Bridge but I think I can wait for the Sandy Bridge -E next month. I'm hoping that it will lower the prices of the current chips.

[Aslanna]

Oh well. I don't think I can wait for the Ivy Bridge but I think I can wait for the Sandy Bridge -E next month. I'm hoping that it will lower the prices of the current chips.

Eh. It's a few months away at most. I'd assume there will be sufficient volume within 6 months. That's not really that long especially if you're already waiting a month!

I have a i7-930 so decided to skip SB. I'll probably do a new build mid 2012 though so IB works out well for me. Besides I don't do anything heavy duty really so no rush to spend money I don't need to. Gotta pace myself!

[Bubba Grizz]

Problem is that I haven't only just been waiting for next month. I've been waiting a 5 months already. There will always be something new to wait for but if I spend all my time waiting nothing gets done. I'll pull the trigger mid-november most likely.