A New Cadence for Technological Advancement

Building on the foundation of Intel Coremicroarchitecture (introduced in 2006), Intel isestablishing a new cadence that will speed up thedelivery of products featuring superior performanceand energy-efficiency for years to come. Intel plansto deliver a new, optimized energy-efficient performancemicroarchitecture approximately every twoyears that supports all its process technologyadvancements. For instance, in late 2007, Intelprocess technology will transition to 45 nm andeffectively double the number of transistors in agiven die size. In 2008 Intel will follow this gain witha new microarchitecture codenamed “Nehalem”expected to deliver new capabilities and severalpercentage-point improvements in performanceand energy-efficiency. This cycle will then moveon to 32 nm and another new microarchitecturetargeted for 2010.

This fundamental relationship between power and frequencycan be effectively used to multiply the number of cores fromtwo to four, and then eightand more, to deliver continuousincreases in performance without increasing power usage.To do this though, there are many advancements that mustbe made that are only achievable by a company like Intel.These include:

• Continuous advances in silicon process technology from65 nm to 45 nm and to 32 nm) to increase transistor density.In addition, Intel is committed to continuing to deliver superiorenergy-efficient performance transistors.
• Enhancing the performance of each core and optimizingit for multi-core through the introduction of new advancedmicroarchitectures about every two years.
• Improving the memory subsystem and optimizing dataaccess in ways that ensure data can be used as fast aspossible among all cores. This minimizes latency andimproves efficiency and speed.• Optimizing the interconnect fabric that connects the coresto improve performance between cores and memory units.
• Optimizing and expanding the instruction set toenhance the capabilities of Intel® architecture and enablethe industry to deliver advanced applications with greaterperformance and lower power requirements. Some of theseinstructions can effectively dedicate a core to deliverspecific capabilities.
• Continuing to grow Intel’s commitment to developingmulti-core software tools and programs by workingclosely with developers, independent software vendors(ISVs), operating system vendors (OSVs) and academia.Through these efforts, Intel enables the industry todevelop software that runs faster and better on ourenergy-efficient performance multi-core platforms.