Intel's New 45nm Penryn Plant Goes Green
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As the company begins using the plant to make a significant shift from 65nm to 45nm microprocessors, it's also trying to boost its green quotient.
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AMD provides a sneak peek at how its pending quad-core chip will improve performance and save energy.
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By JORDAN ROBERTSON SAN JOSE, Calif. - Intel Corp. has designed a computer chip that promises to perform calculations as quickly an entire data center - while consuming as much energy as a light bulb.
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(InfoWorld) - Intel is making samples of itsÂ Penryn server chipsÂ widely available to computer makers ahead of a planned product launch during the fourth quarter, a company executive said Wednesday. "We're now broadly sampling [Penryn] for all the various platforms," said John Antone, vice president and general manager of Intel Asia-Pacific, in a telephone interview. PenrynÂ is the code name given to the 45-nanometer versions of Intel's processors. The server version of the Penryn chips will be the first to hit the market, followed by mobile and desktop chips. Intel hasn't said publicly when the Penryn launch will happen, except to say the chips will be available during the fourth quarter. The company hopes the chips willÂ keep up the pressureÂ on rival Advanced Micro Devices (AMD), which has seen its server market share shrink in recent months. The Penryn launch will happen after AMD's upcoming server chip, calledÂ Barcelona, hits the market. Originally scheduled for a mid-year launch, the quad-coreÂ Barcelona chips will begin shippingÂ in August, and will be available in servers from September. AMD is betting the server chip's design and performance will stem its market share losses, butÂ Intel remains confidentÂ that Penryn will extend its lead. Preparations for Penryn's impending launch come as Intel appears to have regained its mojo, following several missteps last year. On Tuesday,Â Intel reportedÂ a 44-percent increase in second-quarter profit, to $1.3 billion. Lower selling prices for its microprocessors during the period were offset by higher than expected unit shipments, the company said. Asia-Pacific, excluding Japan, accounted for 51 percent of Intel's $8.7 billion second-quarter sales, largely because so many of the world's computers are manufactured in the region, the company said. That figure does not reflect where those computers are bought by end users. When looked at from a consumption basis, processor shipments to end users in the three main regions -- the Americas; Europe, the Middle East and Africa; and Asia -- are roughly equal, with each accounting for about one-third of unit shipments, Antone said. Â
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Highlights of this year's Intel Developer forum included new 45nm Penryn and Nehalem CPUs, upcoming server and enthusisat motherboards, $200 laptops, and a talk with Gordon Moore. Here's what it all looked like.
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(InfoWorld) - Intel said Tuesday it will ramp up performance and energy efficiency in its microprocessors by using a 32-nanometer process technology starting in 2009. During a keynote at the Intel Developer Forum in San Francisco, Intel president and CEO Paul Otellini showed a 300mm wafer built using the 32-nm manufacturing technology. The chip will house more than 1.9 billion transistors and its increased performance will enable "true to life entertainment and real-life graphics capabilities," Otellini said in his keynote. The chips will be an upgrade over processors built using the 45-nm process Intel is incorporating in its Penryn processor, due in November, and Silverthorne and Nehalem processors, slated to appear early and in the second half of next year, respectively. Intel currently uses a 65-nm process to manufacture chips, and Penryn is the code name given to the 45-nm "shrink" of Intel's current chip designs. The measurements refer to the size of the features on the silicon chip. In the first public demonstration of the Nehalem processor, Otellini said it will deliver better performance per watt and better system performance through its QuickPath Interconnect system architecture, which will include an integrated memory controller and improved communication links between system components. Otellini also announced a Penryn dual-core processor operating at 25 watts that will be available on the upcoming Montevina platform, which will also include WiMax technology. To meet multiple computing needs, Otellini said Intel also plans to introduce 15 new 45-nm processors by the end of the year and 20 in the first quarter of 2008. Intel isn't the first to announce 32-nm chip technology. In May, a group of chipmakers led by IBM agreed to further collaborate to jointly develop 32-nm semiconductor production technology. Other companies in the collaboration include Freescale Semiconductor, Chartered Semiconductor Manufacturing, Infineon Technologies, and Samsung Electronics. There was nothing surprising in Otellini's keynote, said Doug Freedman, an analyst at American Technology Research. Intel's road map tends to be conservative, and the company is well on track to meeting its time line, he said. With the new chips, users will continue to get more processing performance at a similar price point, he said.
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InfoWorld - Advanced Micro Devices is undaunted by rival Intel&#8217;s recent headline-grabbing announcements of 45-nm (nanometer) processing technology and a deal to supply Xeon chips to Sun Microsystems.
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(InfoWorld) - Intel Corp. quad-core microprocessors that work at an energy-efficient 50 watts per processor will officially be on the market starting Monday, according to the company. Each of the four cores in its new Xeon L5320 and L5310 will consume just 12.5 watts of electricity, according to Intel. The company claims the new Xeons use between 35 percent and nearly 60 percent less power than its existing 80-watt and 120-wattÂ quad-core server products. The L5320 operates at 1.86 GHz and the L5310 at 1.60 GHz. They both feature 8M bytes of on-die cache for faster memory data communication. In quantities of 1,000 units, the L5320 is priced at US$519 and the L5310 at $455. The new Xeons can be coupled with Intel's existing Bensley server platform, replacing existing dual-core or quad-core Intel processors. Intel and Advanced Micro Devices Inc. are locked in competition for dominance in the quad-core chip market, as enterprises demand more performance out of servers. Meanwhile, customers are demanding greater energy efficiency as data center electrical costs rise. AMD in February released details of its coming new quad-core chip,Â code-named Barcelona, at a technical conference in San Francisco. Barcelona, due to be released midyear, improves performance and energy efficiency over the competition and over AMD's own dual-core processor, the Opteron, which it introduced in 2003, said Brent Kerby, product marketing manager for Opteron, in an earlier IDG News Service interview. Servers based on the new Xeons are expected to be available worldwide over the next few months from such server manufacturers as Dell Inc., Hewlett-Packard Co., IBM Corp. and others.
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Penryn is the code name given to the 45-nanometer versions of Intel's processors.
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Computers built with Advanced Micro Devices&#39; Opteron processor soon will be able to take advantage of the same power management technology the company has already built into its laptop and desktop microchips.
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Intel develops a new chip that roughly doubles the number of transistors on a chip.
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It's becoming clear that the low-power Silverthorne processor is more than a new chip. It is a building block for Intel's future road map.
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Intel Corp. has built a new chip packed with a record 2 billion transistors, more than doubling the processing power of a line of its chips for supercomputers, the company said.
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Processors offer significant power savings, chip maker says.
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Intel's first manufacturing facility for producing 45-nanometer processors in high volume will open in October in Chandler, Ariz.
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Desktop chips roadmapped IDF Processors based on 'Penryn', Intel's 45nm architecture, will be formally launched on 12 November, the chip giant's CEO, Paul Otellini, revealed today. But what CPUs will the company announce?â¦
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Linux Journal recently caught up with Intel's Arjan van de Ven.  Van de Ven leads Intel's green Lesswatts.org initiative and is the developer of PowerTOP, one of the most acclaimed power management tools on the Linux platform. read more