Multi Core Processors : Introduction

One constant in computing is that the world’s hunger for faster performance is never satisfied. Every new performance advance in processors leads to another level of greater performance demands from businesses and consumers. Today these performance demands are not just for speed, but also for smaller, more powerful mobile devices, longer battery life, quieter desktop PCs, and—in the enterprise—better Price/performance per watt and lower cooling costs. People want improvements in productivity, security, multitasking (running multiple applications simultaneously on your computer), data protection, game performance, and many other capabilities. There’s also a growing demand for more convenient form factors for the home, office, data center, and on the go.

Through advances in silicon technology, microarchitecture, software, and platform technologies, Intel is on a fast-paced trajectory to continuously deliver new generations of multi-core processors with the superior performance and energy-efficiency necessary to meet these demands for years to come. A new cadence1 in the microarchitecture arena (see sidebar next page), combined with Intel’s ability to continue to extend Moore’s Law, will enable Intel to bring new levels of performance, power savings, and computing capabilities year after year.

In mid-2006, we reached new levels of energy-efficient performance with our Intel® Core™2 Duo processors and Dual-Core Intel® Xeon® processor 5100 series, both produced with our latest 65-nanometer(nm) silicon technology and microarchitecture (Intel® Core™ microarchitecture). Now we’re ready to top that with the world’s first mainstream quad-core processors for both desktop and mainstream servers—Intel® Core™2 Quad processors, Intel® Core™2 Extreme quad-core processors, and others. This paper explains the advantages and challenges of multi-core processing, plus provides a glimpse into the upcoming Intel quad-core processors and the direction in which Intel is taking multi-core processors to the future. We discuss many of the benefits you will see as we continue to increase processor performance, energy efficiency, and capabilities.