Tick Tock - 10 years on the Intel clock

by Zara Baxter on Jan 8, 2008

Penryn and beyond
The first 45nm products we’ll see are versions of the current Core 2. Penryn-based dual- and quad-core chips are code-named Wolfdale and Yorkfield, respectively. The first models in Australia were integrated into desktop and mobile computers from November 2007 onwards.

Additional advantages will include a larger cache – shared L2 cache on the new Penryn based Core Duo will total 6MB for dual core and 12MB for quad core chips – and support for the new SSE4 instruction set.

There won’t be a ‘Penryn inside’ sticker, so to know you’ve got a Penryn, you’ll have to dig below the surface and check out the processor number. The first example we’re likely to see is the 3GHz Core 2 Extreme QX6950, with 12MB L2 cache and 1333MHz front side bus. Benchmark results from Intel put the QX6950 7-13% faster than the 65nm QX6850 processor with the same clock speed.

Penryn is just the first step. Intel describes it as a “tick”, and not of the ten legged variety. For Intel, development runs in two year cycles. The tick step takes the chip from the last manufacturing process and shrinks it onto the next generation manufacturing process – in the case of Penryn, that means scaling the existing 65nm chips into a new 45nm process. The second step, which Intel calls a ‘tock”, involves a complete overhaul of the processor, taking advantage of all the benefits of the 45nm process. This 45nm architecture will be called Nehalem and it’s due in 2009.

Ronak Singhal, computer processor architect for Nehalem, says that the processor features a number of energy efficiency enhancements. He also describes the change in focus at Intel, from performance to energy efficient performance as an overall goal.

“In the past, whenever we’ve added features for performance we’ve just wanted to add performance. If a feature added performance, we’d add it to the processor. Now, before we add, it has to be power efficient as well as a performance boost. If it added lots of performance but not power efficient, we didn’t use it. New concept for us. We had a maniacal focus on energy efficiency.”

Nehalem, which has been in progress for four years now, will feature simultaneous multi-threading (SMT) – essentially Hyperthreading by a new name – of two threads per core. For processors with 1-8 cores, that means SMT of 2-16 threads. Intel claims that increasing threads rather than cores is more energy efficient, and keep costs down.

Another key component of the Nehalem architecture is a technology called QuickPath which Intel claims will result in higher bandwidth and lower latency to memory, providing benefits for those using databases, games and many other other applications.

Beyond Penryn and Nehalem’s 45 nm process are future developments on 32nm architectures. 32nm process technology has been in development for 5 years, and it’s about four months ahead of schedule. A 32nm SRAM wafer, containing over 1.9 billion transistors, was demonstrated at IDF. Sanjay Natarajan, 32nm process manager, is understandably pleased: “The 45nm similar announcement was made in January ‘02 – so we’re at 20 months, a little faster than the usual 2 years. This milestone now bodes very well for health of the 32nm process.”

For 32nm process, the “tick” will be a compaction of Nehalem, called ‘Westmere’, in 2009. The Tock step, dubbed ‘Sandy Bridge’ is due for release in 2010. We’ll cover these technologies in more detail down the track.

Natarajan points out that the 32nm process also takes advantage of High-K: “ We learned some things along the way in 45nm, and we’ve implemented them.”

Information beyond Sandy Bridge has not been made public yet, but Natarajan provided hints: “The next tech node will be the 22nm mode. We’ve begun some pathfinding in order to continue to extend Moore’s law.”

Given a tick on 22nm, followed by a 22nm architecture tock in 2012, Intel’s path for the next five years is mapped out. Moore’s law looks safe for another three generations.

This article appeared in the December, 2007 issue of PC Authority.