Were you so impressed by the
reviews of Intel's latest
Lynfield Core i7 chips that you ran out and paid the early-adopter premium to buy one? Your period of superiority hasn't lasted long, dear reader, with the company announcing initial production of 32nm processors has begun. It's taken many years (and a
$7 billion manufacturing investment) to get these Westmere chips onto silicon, with the Clarkdale (desktop) and Arrandale (notebook) lines expected to start showing up in over-sized cardboard boxes before the end of the year. What's next for 45nm chips, like those new Lynnfields? A slow fade to obsolescence, as they're likely to be the last of the breed -- but they at least can take pride in knowing they were the king of their class; a class that resulted in a whopping 200 million sales. Check out the video after the break for a some silicon and cleanroom action.
posted Sep 14th 2009 8:03AM
With 32nm Intel just might finally get something to replace old core2 on notebooks, at 45nm nehalem based chips just wont cut it at any reasonable performance level.
Any reasonable performance? AMD "Thinks" it might be able to compete with Intel's last year's 45nm Nahalem Core i7s by 2011. AMD is so behind that it's sad. They should go back to making wooden chairs and toddler toys.
Seriously what are you on? AMD's best chip out is the 3.4ghz Phenom II x4 and it isnt as good as a Q9550.
And when did this become about AMD? All I'm saying that 45nm mobile nehalems topping out at 2GHz at insane price point just can't hold up against core2.
Spring...why the f did you mention AMD?
discussion fail.....
Nehalem is most certainly worth the upgrade, however the only processor worthy of the upgrade is the i7 920 ($200 at my local Microcenter) and the only reason you should upgrade is if you're running SLI. Two GTX 260's or higher will yield a great performance increase.
People are easily hitting 4 ghz on air cooling with these excellent, cheap overclockers, too. Also, with the i9 being rumored to need nothing more than a bios update for current 1366 boards, the investment looks to be worthwhile as well.
It's more about the fact that all the mobile Nehalem chips are quad core than anything else.
Between turbo, HT, and the per clock performance increase the 1.6GHz 720QM should give you at least the performance of the 2GHz Q9000 for about the same price.
@Brian
That all depends on how you use it.
The 860 ($229 at MC) beats the 920 in more than a few benchmarks, and a single 5850 should beat a pair of 260s for the same price or less. Add to that, I can save $30 on RAM and another $50 to $100 on a 1156 board, and there's a strong argument to be made for Lynnfield chips.
By the time 6 core chips are less than $1K sata 6GB, USB 3.0, and PCIe 3.0 should be standard and I'll need a new MB anyway.
Where? In India?
No not india. But there are a lot of indian scientists working at Intel and other places like NASA. Surprised?
"No not india. But there are a lot of indian scientists working at Intel and other places like NASA. Surprised?"
I'm guessing you're referring to that idiotic Indian chainmail claiming that like 36% of NASA scientists , 38% of American doctors, and 34% of Microsoft are Indians etc etc. This was picked up by an Indian newspaper, and many Indians started spreading it on the Internet but it has been DEBUNKED. Only 4-5% of NASA scientists are Indian. So stop spreading that bull.
http://wicn.nssc.nasa.gov/cognos/cgi-bin/ppdscgi.exe?BZ=1AAABCWTAOAYABEwU6VFChhEnYeaEGVJHTJm5v_68kbPGbN_Ysq3BgCPnjZk0bMqYEBKlRxkYMEjE7IMRsw0SJEj21eyu~7_514lZMgWzaCmQCMKG7TciaeyUkTMnDZ08JWDkEPKGDtpbHCnjhuw9bzC0Fbo5N73L5hcnU6YMva3jw9k18zZlYvaJfRWTrnJqL5lEw_vT4501xRxiepmxWtpPWhrwDx==
Ya that wafer isn't real because you cant be handling it like that, even with gloves on
You can if it's not destined for sale. It may be for promotional purposes, or a throw-away piece used in ramping up production.
Well I work at ibm and we deal with wafers all day everyday and we cant touch them, because any foreign material can ruin it
You could destroy tiny 32nm structures by touching them? Who would have thought!
Its not so much about touching them its more of putting FM (foreign materials) on the wafer from your gloves
You don't get it- they don't care about foreign materials because it's never destined for use...
Foreigners don't worry because for them the materials are domestic.
That is probably just a wafer of 32nm NAND. Either that or an early CPU wafer from when yields were low and they weren't worth very much anyway.
'you cant be handling it like that, even with gloves on'
Actually, you can! - I had an old Nat Semi wafer at home which I used as a table mat. You just can't slice it up and expect to work afterwards.
Hey Jordan, you forgot to mention that he can't be in the same room with that wafer without his suit hood on. And the camera man probably isn't wearing a suit either. And there are probably a bunch of other people there putting there suits on since that is where they do that sort of thing. Man that wafer is going to be junk! I hope the CPU I buy doesn't come from that wafer.
:O
Sounds really good, all of the stuff like improved gate pitch and transistor drive current should make for some impressively fast processors! Still my Q6600 will probably have to serve me for quite a few years yet. Hopefully being a quad it will last for a while.
The ability to overclock like a mofo can't hurt its longevity either. Longevity of useful lifetime, not necessarily the lifetime of the chip.
Yeah I have mine at 3.2 and on an aftermarket cooler it still idles better than it did on stock at stock freqs. Running at stock on the am cooler and it idles at 28 in a moderately warm room.
I hope this is what Apple's been waiting for to update their processors... with those new batteries these could mean an even bigger increase in longevity.
Notebook are already at a more than acceptable heat level (my mb tends not to get above 130F, even when doing intensive work) but the less cooling we need, the more it will increase battery life. And obviously more balls for the $ is always welcome.
I should be wowed by this, but meh. More cores, lower power consumption and less heat, same old story :)
Actually these will be dual-core. The quad-core versions won't be out until early next year. But yes, low-power/heat is a big deal for batterylife and graphics on the cpu will pave the way for larabee.
"Thats all I got"
Don't start a riot
You feel it when the dance gets hot.
TSMC will be producing of 28 nanometer chips soon .. you'll start seeing them in cell phones early to mid next year.
http://vr-zone.com/forums/470466/tsmc-32-28-nm-process-will-be-the-beginning-of-the-first-quarter-of-2010.html
Intel has really gotten it together after a half a decade of eating AMD dust (performance-wise of course, not in terms of sales). They have almost made their rapid innovation boring, with it being so predictable.
Yes, but it's sad that Intel now no longer has a viable competitor in the CPU market.
Competition spurs innovation. Having a viable competitor is irrelevant if a company is innovating so quickly that no one can keep up. If they slow down I have no doubt there will be several competitors nicking at their heels.
That,s one huge round chip. :)
what about the cell processor that shit never came out for reg pc.
ps3 has it and it sucked, but was supposed to be mad powerful
im snagging a I5 for 179. too bad intel disabled hyper T on it.
wonder if it can be turned on, like how u can activate locked cores on AMD chips
I'm... not sure. I think that possibility would have surfaced by now. But you could try!
What I'd do though is go for a 1366-socket i7 720. Awesome value for money, HT, and doesn't use the crappy 1156 socket.
Seriously, I hate Intel for not using the same socket throughout their core iX - line.
Which feels conflicting, because I love them for that exact product line :D
the reason they are changing the socket is cause they are getting rid of the triple channel memory controller and going back to dual channel since triple channel showed no performance improvements and was just more complicated, and now with these new chips the memory controller is integrated on the chip, so they really had no option but to make a new socket for it, but at least in this case its CHEAPER than the 1366 socket.
@MrThunderfield: If you'd have read any reviews of benchmarking of the Lynnfield chips, you'd know that they out-performed the current Bloomfield i7s the majority of the time. Why is that? They moved to a new socket (1156) because they re-arranged the whole motherboard and how everything connects. RAM and the GPU + its RAM all now directly connect to the CPU rather than passing through the (now non-existent) northbridge, which leads to better performance. Right now unless you need more than one video card there is no reason not to opt for the i7 860 over the 920. Same price for the CPU, the mobo and other parts are cheaper, and the 860 bests the 920 in the vast majority of situations.
Um, he sounds like a hostage being forced to read a ransom note at gunpoint. I'm sure he's a brilliant scientist, but reading appearing in promotional videos doesn't seem to be his thing.
But I shouldn't get caught up on the delivery, in this video it's the message that counts. 32nm, HELL YEAH! Keep em coming, wafer guy!
So, we won't see any of this 32nm craziness in the Mac Pro til next year, huh?
This makes me happy, because now we get faster computers, but it also makes me sad, because they can fit more than 4 times the number of transistors than my current processor, and my once cutting edge computer gets shredded a bit more.
classic intel
Classics Murderface
intel pwns face, I bought a system with a q9400 (core 2 quad @ 2.66) and it destroys anything. for $800 i can run crysis on a 61" tv at 1080p with everything on high.
Oh man, my nipples just got hard
Does anyone know how in the heck Intel can get precision down to 32 nm? I mean wholley mother of guacamole. They are not doing it optically, that is for sure. I wonder what would happen if they broke down below 1 nm. Would our processors become x-ray machines?
Smaller etching sizes using nm light wavelengths to make smaller and smaller chips. However at 25 nm they will be fast approaching a point where they cannot go any smaller due to the fundamental laws of physics.