Energy-efficiency, high performance feature to co-exist in future microprocessors
By RED R. SAMAR
"…We are at the dawn of a new age of energy-efficient performance. It’s really our job to imagine, and our job to create and deliver this technology to the industry. The opportunities are great. The challenges are great also. But we, together and collectively, are agents of change. We can make help energy-efficient performance a reality for the industry…"
This was the call made by Justine Rattner, Intel Senior Fellow and chief technology officer (CTO) to PC makers and the developer community in his keynote speech at the recent Intel Developer Forum (IDF) Spring 2006, as he unveiled details of the company’s new Intel Core microarchitecture, a new industry–leading foundation for the chipmaker’s future microprocessor offerings for multi–core server, desktop and mobile computers.
Rattner believes the Intel Core microarchitecture is a milestone in enabling scalable performance and energy efficiency. He said that this state-of-the-art, multi-core optimized microarchitecture will deliver a number of new and innovative features that will set new standards for energy-efficient performance.
"Intel Core microarchitecture is the foundation for delivering greater energy–efficient performance first seen in the Intel Core Duo processor and builds on the power–saving philosophy that begun with the Mobile Intel Pentium M processor microarchitecture and greatly expands it," he said.
Rattner added that the new Intel Core microarchitecture incorporates many new and leading–edge microarchitectural innovations as well as existing Intel Pentium 4 processor technologies such as wide data pathways and streaming instructions as well as existing NetBurst microarchitecture features.
Planned for introduction starting in the third quarter of 2006, the Intel CTO expects later this year Intel’s new Core microarchitecture to fuel new dual–core processors and quad–core processors in 2007, which he expects to deliver industry leading performance and capabilities per watt.
ENHANCING USERS’
EXPERIENCES
Rattner said that the first Intel Core microarchitecture products to be built on Intel’s advanced 65nm process technology, is expected to deliver higher–performing, yet more energy–efficient processors that spur more stylish, quieter and smaller mobile and desktop computers and servers that can reduce electricity and real–estate associated costs, and provides critical capabilities such as enhanced security, virtualization and manageability for consumers and businesses.
"People will see systems that can be faster, smaller and quieter with longer battery life and lower electric bills," Rattner said.
Intel said that with its higher performance and low power, the new Intel Core microarchitecture will become the basis for many new solutions and form factors. Thus, its higher performance, greater energy efficiency, and more responsive multitasking will enhance user experiences in all environments – in homes, businesses, and on the go.
In the home, these include higher performing, ultra-quiet, sleek and lowpower computer designs and new advances in more sophisticated, user-friendly entertainment systems. For IT, it will reduce the footprint and lower power and thermal burdens in server data centers, as well as increase responsiveness, productivity and energy efficiency across client and server platforms. Wheile for mobile users, the Intel Core microarchitecture would mean greater computer performance combined with leading battery life to enable a variety of small form factors that enable worldclass computing "on the go."
KEY FEATURES
The Intel Core microarchitecture will include new and innovative features enabling these new levels of performance, performance/watt and energy efficiency. Key features include:
l Intel Wide Dynamic Execution
Dynamic execution is a combination of techniques (data flow analysis, speculative execution, out of order execution, and super scalar) that Intel first implemented in the P6 microarchitecture used in the Pentium Pro processor, Pentium II processor and Pentium III processors. Now with the Intel Core microarchitecture, Intel significantly enhances this capability with Intel Wide Dynamic Execution that enables delivery of more instructions per clock cycle to improve execution time and energy efficiency. Every execution core is 33% wider than previous generations, allowing each core to fetch, dispatch, execute and retire up to four full instructions simultaneously.
Moreover, Intel Wide Dynamic Execution also includes a new and innovative capability called Macro-Fusion. Macro-fusion combines certain common x86 instructions into a single instruction for execution. Combined, Intel Wide Dynamic Execution increases instruction execution efficiency thus increasing performance and energy efficiency.
l Intel Intelligent Power Capability
Intel Intelligent Power Capability is a set of capabilities designed to reduce power consumption and design requirements. This feature manages the runtime power consumption of all the processor’s execution cores. The result is excellent energy optimization enabling the Intel Core microarchitecture to deliver more energy-efficient performance for desktop PCs, mobile PCs and servers.
l Intel Advanced Smart Cache
The Intel Advanced Smart Cache is a multi-core optimized cache that significantly reduces latency to frequently used data, thus improving performance and efficiency by increasing the probability that each execution core of a dual-core processor can access data from a higher-performance, more efficient cache subsystem.
l Intel Smart Memory Access
Intel Smart Memory Access improves system performance by optimizing the use of the available data bandwidth from the memory subsystem and hiding the latency of memory accesses. It includes an important new capability called "memory disambiguation," which increases the efficiency of out-of-order processing by providing the execution cores with the built-in intelligence to speculatively load data for instructions that are about to execute before all previous store instructions are executed.
l Intel Advanced Digital Media Boost
The Intel Advanced Digital Media Boost is a feature that significantly improves performance when executing Streaming SIMD Extension (SSE/SSE2/SSE3) instructions. They accelerate a broad range of applications, including video, speech and image, photo processing, encryption, financial, engineering and scientific applications. The Intel Advanced Digital Media Boost feature enables these 128-bit instructions to be completely executed at a throughput rate of one per clock cycle, effectively doubling, on a per clock basis, the speed of execution for these instructions as compared to previous generations.
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