Penryn 40pc faster, Intel claims
Correspondents in Beijing and San Francisco
APRIL 18, 2007

INTEL says a new line of processors DUE out later this year will be about 40 per cent faster than current chips when running computer games, videos and other heavy workloads.

The world's biggest microchip maker, which powers about 75 per cent of computers, said the new Penryn processors will have the same basic design as current ones, but the circuitry will be 30 per cent thinner - just 45 millionths of a millimetre wide.

"In high-performance computing and BANDWIDTH intensive applications ... there will be up to a whopping 45 per cent performance increase," general manager for Intel's digital enterprise group Patrick Gelsinger said.

The Penryn would be the world's first 45 nanometre processor, Mr Gelsinger said at the Intel Developer Forum in Beijing on TUESDAY. The new processors will hit the market later this year, but Gelsinger did not provide a timeline.

In a prototype Penryn chip with four processing cores, that translated into 40 per cent faster performance in computer games and video processing, while more mundane tasks such as image processing ran about 15 per cent faster, Mr Gelsinger said.

Intel held the forum in China just a month after saying it would build a $US2.5 billion ($3 billion) microchip plant on the mainland, underscoring the growing importance of the country in global electronics manufacturing.

The successor to Penryn, a family of chips known as Nehalem, will make their debut in 2008 with an overhauled design and featuring up to eight processing cores, double that of current top-of-the-line chips, he said.

Intel also reiterated plans to build graphics capabilities into Nehalem processors, a sign that it is mounting a challenge to AMD chips scheduled to come out in early 2009.

AMD's plans to integrate graphics into its processors - a project known as "Fusion" - is one result of its $US5.4 billion purchase of CANADIAN graphics chip maker ATI last year.

Intel currently offers graphics integrated into its chipsets, the cluster of secondary chips and interfaces that surround a central processor and make it work with various parts of a computer.

The bulk of personal computers - especially laptops - are sold with integrated graphics, and analysts have said the move to include such functions in processors themselves could put pressure on the market for separate graphics cards made by Nvidia as well as AMD's ATI division.

Nvidia has said it was not worried about integrated graphics, saying that the high-end graphics capabilities needed in areas such as games and medical imaging will sustain demand for its more powerful dedicated graphics chips.

http://australianit.news.com.au/articles/0,7204,21577468%5E15321%5E%5Enbv%5E,00.htmlWhat does this have to do with me? Not sure, but you keep losing karma, if you care.

Nice article honvetops, shows how we're moving on ever faster in technology.
It seems that the showdown is drawing near, I think if AMD's Fusion doesn't cut it it's going to find it hard to recover share against Intel.
It also seems that nVidia will not join forces with Intel, as previously predicted by many.
Finally, I doubt that these integrated chips will ever replace discrete graphics cards.
It's true that integrated graphics have a much larger share of the market than discrete chips, but I don;t see gamers moving away from high-performance ones to integrated chips, it doesn't work like that.
So there will always be a market for both cheap integrated chips to save money and power, and more expensive, power hungry dedicated ones, for better performance.Quote from: Raptor on April 18, 2007, 12:07:29 PM

What does this have to do with me?

By the way, I just post the stuff I am not too savy on these new cpu's but;
why can't intel/ Amd just concentrate on a Super Core Duo / 1,2, maybe 3 core processors and really tweak them with real high Mgz speeds along with some multi-tasking Huh? Why in the heck do we need to keep doubling the cores as a way of progress? I am curious!!

Calum* any chance you have info (on-your faq page) on these so-called CAD / medical industrial graphic cards, i talk to this guy who is into them and I have no idea why the $$$ is so top dollar on them and what type he is referring to?

maybe those are the ones on newegg their like 1500.00 ati cards ?

This guy wants to buy a 4000.00 apple 32" monitor to see 2D cad & photography work !! what a dumbazz !

I keep reading that there is a bandwidth problem (bottlenecking & speed issues) with these multi-core cpu's