Intel is quickly improving its processor technology.With the release of its new i7 processors, intel is now undeniably the leader in next generation processor technology.Intel i7 is the brand name for intels new family of dextop and laptop 64bit x86-64 processors using Nehalem microarchitecture.
Nehalem is a code name for Intel processor microarchitecture, successor to the Core microarchitecture.Initial Nehalem processors use the same 45 nm manufacturing methods as Penryn. A working system with two Nehalem processors was shown at Intel Developer Forum Fall 2007,and a large number of Nehalem systems were shown at Computex in June 2008.
Here are some of the main features of Nehalem microarchetichture
1. Two, four, six, eight, ten, or twelve cores
2. 731 million transistors for the quad core variant
3. 45 nm manufacturing process at initial release (with 32 nm variants following)
4. Integrated memory controller supporting two or three memory channels of DDR3 SDRAM or four FB-DIMM2 channels
5. Integrated graphics processor (IGP) located off-die, but in the same CPU package
6. A new point-to-point processor interconnect, the Intel QuickPath Interconnect, in high-end models, replacing the legacy front side bus
7. Integration of PCI Express and Direct Media Interface into the processor in mid-range models, replacing the northbridge
8. Simultaneous multithreading (SMT) by multiple cores which enables two threads per core. 8. Intel calls this hyper-threading. Simultaneous multithreading has not been present on a consumer desktop Intel processor since 2006 with the Pentium 4 and Pentium XE. Intel reintroduced SMT with their Atom Architecture.
Native (monolithic, i.e. all processor cores on a single die) quad- and octal-core processors
The following caches:
32 KB L1 instruction and 32 KB L1 data cache per core
256 KB L2 cache per core
4–12 MB L3 cache shared by all cores
2. 731 million transistors for the quad core variant
3. 45 nm manufacturing process at initial release (with 32 nm variants following)
4. Integrated memory controller supporting two or three memory channels of DDR3 SDRAM or four FB-DIMM2 channels
5. Integrated graphics processor (IGP) located off-die, but in the same CPU package
6. A new point-to-point processor interconnect, the Intel QuickPath Interconnect, in high-end models, replacing the legacy front side bus
7. Integration of PCI Express and Direct Media Interface into the processor in mid-range models, replacing the northbridge
8. Simultaneous multithreading (SMT) by multiple cores which enables two threads per core. 8. Intel calls this hyper-threading. Simultaneous multithreading has not been present on a consumer desktop Intel processor since 2006 with the Pentium 4 and Pentium XE. Intel reintroduced SMT with their Atom Architecture.
Native (monolithic, i.e. all processor cores on a single die) quad- and octal-core processors
The following caches:
32 KB L1 instruction and 32 KB L1 data cache per core
256 KB L2 cache per core
4–12 MB L3 cache shared by all cores
Intel is constantly upgrading its i7 processors.Although all i7 processors featured 4 cores (quads) the recent intel i7 980x features a remarkable 6 core processor.Whats more intersting is that despite adding more core the new processor chip is smaller then the traditional 45 nm chip.The new one is only 32 nm!!.The new processor is clocked at 3.33Ghz.
The new intel i7 family processors are also very good for gamming purposes.With such high speed you can run your latest games quite easily provided that your games feature multithreading, because otherwise only 1 of the 4 or 6 cores of your processor will be utilized.Those with mutitasking applications will also find this processor of great benefit as with intel hyperthreading technology 1 core can process multiple treads and mutithreaded applications run much faster on i7 processors then on any other of its class.
