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The first Penryn CPU is here, the Intel Core 2 Extreme QX9650. A month after AMD released the first real Quad Core Processor based on the Barcelona architecture, Intel fights back with the industry’s first 45nm CPU – the Core 2 Extreme QX9650.
What’s Penryn offering?
First off it’s the first processors to be based on 45nm technology. We will skip trying to explain how small 45nm really is, but rather explain what it means for the processor we use and the advantages it has over 65nm technology. Intel has been developing 45nm transistor technology for over 10 years and had many physicals difficulties to overcome. Why so much effort because smaller transistors make much more energy efficient CPUs, they can switch off and on almost 20 per cent faster than 65nm transistors, so a 45nm CPU can do more work per clock cycle than a 65nm CPU. In addition, smaller transistor means smaller CPU which translates into more CPU produced on a single wafer which reduces production costs.
45 nm technology aside, the Core 2 Extreme QX9650 also offers new Penryn based micro-architecture which has many different improvements and new features:
- Improved radix divider (the part of the CPU that calculates subtractive algorithms) - The Penryn architecture introduces a new 68-bit CSA/CPA divider known as radix-16, which can calculate four bits per iteration (instead of 2).
- The new Super Shuffle Engine – Super Shuffle engine improves the performance of SSE instructions without software having to be recompiled
- Intel also introduces the SSE4. This adds a further 47 instructions to the X86 instruction set, and they’re designed to perform tasks related to video encoding and photo editing that would have previously taken several separate instructions. (Although new software has to be written to take advantage of SSE4)
- Improved cache architecture
- More L2 cache – Dual-core Penryn architecture CPUs will have 6MB of shared L2 cache and the Quad-Core Penryn architecture CPUs will have 12MB of L2 cache
As for performance well its safe to say that the Core 2 Extreme QX9650 out performs everything that is out there today (if you want the full benchmark results and graphs you can find them here). Should you buy it? Only if you are crazy enough to spend over 1000$ on a really powerful processor. But, Intel has broken through and started setting the new standard for CPU’s. The Core 2 Extreme QX9650 is just the first of the Penryn family. Cheaper Dual Core Processor are soon to follow making today’s computers look slow & primitive. And to think we were once impressed buy 90nm technology…
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