Intel launches 45nm Penryn chips
Intel plans to announce a family of microprocessor chips on Monday that it says will speed the availability of high-definition video via the Internet. Sean Maloney, Intel’s chief sales and marketing officer, said last week that the chips’ increased computing power would begin the transformation of today’s stuttering and blurry videos, the staple of YouTube and other video streaming sites, into high-resolution, full-screen quality that will begin to compete with the living room HDTV. “It’s biggest impact is high-definition video,” he said. “It will be highly addictive.” Intel’s new family, made up of 16 processors, would first be used in servers and high-end desktops that compress the video. They are the first chips based on a new manufacturing process that Intel says will give it a significant competitive advantage by increasing computing performance while reducing power consumption.
The chips, which were developed under the code name Penryn, use a re-engineered transistor that is about half the size of its predecessor. It switches more quickly, reqube ires less switching power and leaks less current than that previous transistor. The Penryn chips are at the next stage of refinement, just 45 nanometers. The company said it would be able to squeeze up to 820 million transistors onto a single silicon die. The company is making the chips at two factories, in Oregon and Arizona. Next year, it will add two plants, in Israel and New Mexico. The first products based on the new manufacturing technology will be Intel Core 2 and Xeon microprocessors. Chips for notebook PCs, marketed as the Intel Core 2 Extreme and Intel Core 2 Duo, will available in the first quarter of next year. Is this the end of AMD? Unless they introduce a really revolutionary processor, their days may be slowly over…
Source: NY Times

Comments(26)
Intel seem to be right on target with their new cpu production line and market strategy. They started work on the dual cores back in 2005.
AMD seem to continue to focus their developments for PC gaming, maybe that’s their niche market??
On a more adult theme.
As a parent i sp[end all my time telling my children to turn the damn television of and go outside and play.
Now this…..faster and better !! Damn you intel !!
PS WIll this let the wife channel hop quuicker so she can go to bed quicker declairing there is nothing on TV and I can then get the remote quicker?
no it means you wont beable to check rlslog any more becouse she will ocupie the computer…
sorry mate see ya never again
Sorry bad english
but i dont think amd is out they DID do better then the moste people think they would. and yeah intel fan boys say HEY they got minus “HAHA” they did go minus becouse they bought some thing not becouse they dident sell what they was supose to sell…
its like if you save money to buy a game when you buy it you go minus in cash but it was not cash you realy needed becouse you saved it.
i am no amd fan boy i only bought amd becouse if we only have one madjor cpu maker the market will go to a halt and not continue to evolve like it has in the last years the price has gone down and new stuff has been poping out like ever before.
if amd goes out inte wont need to make there products much more better and can take a higher price so save the planet and your future BUY AMD
and if amd goes past intel save the planet BUY INTEL!!!
i guess i well get flamed on becouse of this but hey i aint rong
The comment “Is this the end of AMD? Unless they introduce a really revolutionary processor, their days may be slowly over…” is…misguided, at best.
The 45nm penryn chips are pretty spiffy, but it’s important to keep in mind that Intel has this strategy of leapfrogging chips without optimizing – they jumped from the regular 90nm to the 65nm and now to 45nm in not that many years, and AMD has been optimizing their 90nm and now their 65nm chips to great effect. What it means is that while the Intel chips may have the edge in performance, AMD chips are definitely the better deal per dollar. Until recently, AMD had been gaining in server market share, which is where most of the money is.
Of course, with this chip, that market may see a return to Intel’s dominance, but if anything, it’s Intel that gets the niche gaming market. If the 45nm chip is going to cost +$1000, that’s not a large market to capture. Furthermore, AMD is far from dead, with their new Bobcat and Fusion chips coming out.
buy amd because they are 2nd and when amd are on top buy intel,
LMFAO
lol @ 4
come on, you advocating the inferior product as the one of choice regardless of performance!!
for me, value for money is key,
for my last 3 upgrade paths intel has won on performacne and value for money, amd are never going to win unless the get equivical performance for cost.
Last 3 upgrades? You really went into Pentium D? you are quite brave, I mean it’s one thing to have a broken structure (31-stage pipeline P4) but to go on to adopt what Intel has basically disavowed any knowledge of is quite the move.
Just so you know 31 stages is not a better thing, you would want your data out in as few steps as possible, not 5hrs later. At least they finally got that picture ages later in the Core 2 Duo.
FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUCCCKKKKK AMD!!!!
noob
It dosent really matter..
You buy what is best for you at the given moment..
So let them race till earth blows up.
Customer decides when time is right.. if we would wait for best perfomance we would still be sitting on 386 and 486.
I bought core duo and i know it will be a great bang for the bucks for a couple of years,then ill research the market and see who is leading, you have to change motherboard with new computer anyways… as they advance too..
Actually i would love to see one motherboard chip to rule them all but with lets say 3 major cpu developers.. unify the standards first please…
let us all hope that amd and other competitors will remain in the market. there is nothing as bad as a monopoly. this would mean higher prices and less innovation.
For this new intel chip, what sort of processor speeds can we now get?
@1 ironic, AMD’s are the least used processors for gaming….
In january they will launch their E8XXX serie (E8200,E8300 E 8400 etc)
Its a core 2 duo @1333Mhz with 6MB (!!)cache under 200 dollars!
I believe de E8500 Runs @3Ghz and is easy overclockable to 4Ghz !!
The TPD will be around 65W
@13
ther FX serie is for gaming
but i dont know how it preforms i rearly find a review of them (but i might be at the wrong places)
@psies
Yeah a (3|4)ghz core 2 duo that goes by 65W
(i can be wrong but i highly doubt that)
Ugh, next year as so much new hardware. It’s practically a whole computer upgrade, although hopefully I can get away with my 8800GTX KO. Maybe add a second one if they get cheap, the Ultra’s. But need a new CPU, which means new mobo and RAM. Damnit, new computer or the wedding. I can guess my fiancee’s answer.
@14
The list you are thinking of is probably this.
QX9770 3.2GHz 1600MHz 2x 6MB 136W Q1 ‘08 $1399
QX9650 3.0GHz 1333MHz 2x 6MB 130W 12-11 $999
Q9550 2.83GHz 1333MHz 2x 6MB 95W Q1 ‘08 $530
Q9450 2.66GHz 1333MHz 2x 6MB 95W Q1 ‘08 $316
Q9300 2.5GHz 1333MHz 2x 3MB 95W Q1 ‘08 $266
E8500 3.16GHz 1333MHz 6MB 65W Q1 ‘08 $266
E8400 3.0GHz 1333MHz 6MB 65W Q1 ‘08 $183
E8300 2.83GHz 1333MHz 6MB 65W Q2 ‘08 ?
E8200 2.66GHz 1333MHz 6MB 65W Q1 ‘08 $163
Take note that the dual cores are running the lower wattage but the quads jump to 130w to run at 3GHz. even with the die shrink they’re still fighting to get an efficient design given they’re running a bridged 2 cpu single chip solution.
Waiting for x2 Quad Yorkfields (Oct-Core) on Intel “skulltrail”, or Nforce 7(8)xx SLI, with x3 8800GT 512mb SSC editions in Tri-SLI
pwrned.
This will be my new 2008 computer, because my 2007 computer [E6700 2.67ghz, 8800GTS 640mb, nForce 680i SLI] seems a little lackluster right now
As for the tired AMD vs Intel argument it is really played out. Intel beats AMD in performance PERIOD. This stupid argument of “value for the dollar” is really idiotic as value for the dollar is decided by the consumer. You can argue all day that a Volkswagen GTI gives better “value for the dollar” compared to a Ferrari F430, but you know what? People with the money and passion for cars are going to buy the F430’s and enjoy destroying every VW GTI that they see. If you look at side by side comparisons Intels r4pe AMD processors performance wise and the price gap is not that large.
@18
Big thanks for the most useful info. I’d been planning to order a new CPU and mobo this very eve and was worrying what was round the corner. Still gonna go with the ultra cheapo e2180 though as it overclocks like beatch and I don’t have a need for a collosal cache.
Oh this is the reason I always get in trouble with the wife. I guess I better start saving up soda cans or something. This sounds like something right up everyones alley. Intel has come a long way in the past five years. This new chip should be great for us media watchers.
intel is now the gamming processer not amd , amd losed that when intel brought out the duos and quad , every gamming benchmark intel wins in , and a q6600 is better value and more bang for buck than any amd plus the intels overclock much better i mean a q6600 easy 3.5ghz and plus if u look anyway the new amd chips have been benched agaist intels and the intels still beat it
I am waiting for wolfdale 45nm @ 3.1 GHz @65 TDP then I will be updating, I will have to still shop for all the components like watercooling, right balance of motherboard that is good for overclocking and tweaking memory times and overclocking videocards etc.
I have a abit motherboard now, I am thinking about trying out a DFI Lanparty board.
Am I missing something or are places like boxx making machines that have the potential to ‘r4pe’ all these single or dual processor systems. 8 quad core opterons seem like a lot to me. Is it something to do with the ram only being 667Mhz? or what?
8 quadcores are mostly for servers.. Most ppl only need dual-core or quad-core for gaming and or running servers. 8 core is mostly just business level.
@19
Why wait? Tyan has been making multiple socket boards for a while now, although most of them are limited to 2 on the Intel side while the AMD side has 4 socket solutions (16 cores with 64GB of RAM supported no matter how you cut it is a lovely dream for those wishing to go overkill at the moment)
775 is for the consumer desktop, 771 is for their enterprise solutions.