Intel's 45nm Penryn - Big improvements!

Some hot *HOT* details have come to light in regards to Intel's next-gen "Penryn" family of processors (due next quarter), these taking Core 2 micro architecture down to a 45nm process.

Dailytech let us know that we can expect much more than just the usual benefits to come from shrinking the die of a chip, as it appears there are quite a number of other tweaks done to it for even greater performance than the current crop of Core 2 offerings, clock-for-clock (faster cache and more of it, SSE4 optimizations etc.).

HKEPC go one better and give us all an excellent idea of the kind of performance increase we can expect from current to next-gen core 2 architecture, having gotten a hold of a "Wolfdale"ES Sample(2.33GHz/6MB L2/1333MHz FSB) and pitting it with a current E6550 Core 2 chip running at the same 2.33GHz to see the yields in a huge array of tests.

Intel plans to unleash its Penryn family processors next quarter, shortly after AMD releases Barcelona. Penryn is the umbrella for all 45nm Core 2 micro architecture products, including quad-core Xeon Harpertown, quad-core Core 2 Yorkfield and dual-core Xeon, Core 2 Wolfdale processors.

On the surface, Penryn looks like die shrink of last year's Conroe micro architecture, but Intel sought additional tweaks to the micro architecture to achieve greater performance at the same clock speeds as Conroe processors.

Intel improves existing Wide Dynamic Execution, Advanced Smart Cache, Advanced Digital Media Boost and Intelligent Power Capability, technologies that previously made its debut with Conroe and Merom.

Penryn enhances Wide Dynamic Execution technology with a fast radix-16 divider and improved Virtualization technology. With a fast radix-16 divider, the processor can process 4-bits per cycle instead of the 2-bits per cycle of Conroe - doubling the divide instruction capabilities. Intel VT technology receives enhancements that reduce virtual machine transition latencies by 25-to-75%.