Intel's New Penryn Processors

Those new Intel processors we mentioned during CES are finally starting to show up in laptops in reasonable numbers. Toshiba, Sony, HP, and Dell are all tossing Intel's new mobile processors, built on the chipmaker's way-smaller-than-a-human hair 45-nanometer (nm) technology, into portables aimed at the hardcore, and often media-hungry, computer-user.

Penryn is not a revolution, but rather an evolution of Intel's Core 2 family of processors. Three new technologies have been crammed into this new square of silicon to make faster and more powerful laptops with longer battery life. 

First is the 45nm size reduction of the processor's die (the tech term for a processor's casing or mold). This die shrink means the processor can have features and innards as small as 45 nanometers wide, which means that Intel can squeeze more processors out of a single slab of silicon. The newfound space not only drives down prices, but also enables the new processors to use less energy and run at cooler temperatures. Cooler-running processors mean that Intel can ramp up computing speeds without melting the insides of the computer (or burning your lap, for that matter).

When a processor's die is shrunk, however, it becomes easier for electrons to leak out wasting electricity, and counteracts some of the benefits of the size reduction. To combat this leakage, Intel has introduced a new transistor technology called High-K that reigns in much of the leakage and leads to more energy efficient processors. Tests have shown that Penryn processors can get almost a full hour of battery life over older Core 2's during normal usage and about 20 minutes more while playing back a DVD. 

Lastly, is a new set of instructions called SSE4, which is aimed at speeding up media functions such as video encoding (converting video so you can edit it on your computer) and playback. The catch is that software developers must write applications to specifically take advantage of the new instructions. The popularity of the Intel processors and the dramatic performance increase guarantees that companies will get on board. Applications that are already SSE4-enabled (like the DivX video encoding suite) have seen boosts in performance of almost 40%. That's quite a difference when you're talking about cutting down what typically takes an hour to encode HD video to just over 30 minutes.

AMD's 45nm Phenom II

The AMD Phenom II chips will run at data rates up to 3 GHz. They come both in 65nm versions in an AM2+ socket for DDR2 and 45nm versions using an AM3 socket for DDR2 DDR3 memories running at up to 1333 MHz. The company claims the new chip provide up to 20 percent improvements in performance over the original Phenom CPUs which ran at up to 2.6 GHz. 

The CPUs are available in a new AMD Dragon platform that includes the AMD 790GX chip set and Radeon HD3800 graphics processors and supports DDR2 or DDR3. The chips also support RAID 5 storage, easier CPU overclocking and new power management features.

AMD: Next-Generation Microprocessors

AMD’s Athlon 64 and Opteron processors substantially reshaped the markets of desktop, server and workstation chips thanks to serious performance advantage over competing solutions from Intel, however, the new-generation code-named K10 central processing units (CPUs) can hardly leave Intel’s chips behind in terms of performance, but consume considerably more power. Apparently, AMD has problems with the design of its quad-core AMD Phenom and AMD Opteron processors that cannot be cured easily enough by tweaking the current hardware based on the current micro-architecture.

Bulldozer is the next-generation micro-architecture and processor design developed from the ground up by AMD. It is expected that the next-generation micro-processors will offer considerably higher performance than current-generation chips. AMD Bulldozer CPUs will feature SSE5 instruction set. The first Bulldozer processors are projected to emerge on the market in very late 2009 at the earliest or early 2011 at the latest.

Intel Core i7 Processors: Nehalem and X58 Have Arrived

Intel won't be officially launching their Core i7 processors, formerly codenamed Nehalem, and the X58 Express chipset until sometime.

Intel tested every Core i7 speed grade that will be available at launch, along with at trio of X58 Express based motherboards

Intel's 16 New Processors Based on 45nm Silicon Technology

Intel kicked off this year's CES in a big way, introducing 16 new processors all 

based on the chipmaker's 45 nanometer (nm) process technology. We've been hearing a 

lot about 45 nm lately and, admittedly, it's kind of hard to get excited about 

semiconductor fabrication -- especially when there's all manner of shiny new gizmos 

vying for your attention.

While AMD is expected to move the 45 nm sometime in the second half of 2008, Intel 

began mass-producing these chips in November 2007. In a general sense, 45 nm fans 

the flames of Moore's law, allowing Intel to double the number of transistors in the 

same silicon space. According to the chipmaker, it also allows the company squeeze more 

performance out of smaller transistors and increases the overall energy efficiency of a 

given processor.