Tic-tac
Intel today released some more information about their future processors "Penryn" and "Nehalem" in a conference call. The first one will replace the current generation of Core 2 Duo processors and will be released before this year is out. The latter is the successor to the Penryn and will be released in 2008/2009. The Nehalem contains a lot of interesting features, as we have found out today. An intergrated memory controller as well as an integrated graphics core will both be present in this processor.
Tic-tac
Before we explain the new technologies inside these processors we need to rerun Intel's strategy to you. SOme time ago now INtel introduced its "Tic-Tac" model, indicating that they wish to implement a new production process every two years, but also a new processor architecture every two years. This basically means that a new architecture will be introduced in one year, and in the following year that architecture will be introduced on a smaller production process. On this smaller process the next architecture will be introduced roughly a year after the introduction of the smaller process and so on.
This tic-tac model has been implemented within Intel for about two years now, in 2005 the 65nm proces was introduced with the Presler and Yonahprocessors, based on Intel's Pentium D and Pentium 4. In 2006 the very successfull Core 2 Duo was introduced, a completely new architecture but still on the 65nm production process.
Logically at the end of this year the new revision of the Core 2 Duo is planned, produced on 45nm. This new revision is codenamed Penryn. We already published an article on the new 45nm production process earlier, and this article will explain more on the other enhancements within the Penryn.At the end of 2008 the next architecture will be introduced, still using a 45nm production process. This generation is codenamed Nehalem and is what the Core 2 Duo was compared to the Pentium D. We can't wait to see what it can do.