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The 45nm process technology of Intel is revolutionary, not just evolutionary.

In the past, the name of the game was to see “who has the highest clock speed” (Introduction). Now the game’s multi-core.

AnandTech has benchmarked the Xeon 5300, or Clovertown, family of CPUs. “Virtualization is the primary target for Clovertown” (Intro).

Virtualization allows various operating systems to run within their very own virtual machines on a single CPU. Multiple cores can handle multiple virtual machines, one per core, though virtual machines can also span single cores as well.

A senior technical rep at an IBM conference in 2006 said that in “the coming years, the operating systems we use today will be merely applications” (Intro).

Multicore is accelerating the trend toward virtualization. “Virtualization is growing at an exponential rate” (Intro).

Quad-core offers twice the processing power of dual, which is good. However, one must be careful lest the I/O subsystem become a bottleneck.

In 6-9 months, AMD’s native quad-core Barcelona and Intel’s Penryn families of processors will be upon us, making these benchmarks of less interest.

Intel’s quad-core Penryn cache is fixed at 12MB. However, Intel has not disclosed the processor speeds of Penryn. Possibly the reason is that Intel is waiting on AMD to release Barcelona, so Intel can better measure how high it needs to clock its next-generation CPUs in order to stay competitive, or even beat the competition.

Intel’s 45nm process technology leaks less current, which enables Intel to clock its chips higher without generating additional heat. The chips may generate less heat, but they will not generate more. The amount of heat can be controlled by how fast the chips are set to run.

AMD says that its native quad-core will be faster clock for clock. However, given the higher-clocked Penryn chips, “AMD will apparently need to be about 40% faster clock for clock” (Conclusion).

That, by the way, is about how much AMD claims Barcelona will outperform Clovertown.

Source: AnandTech: Intel Clovertown: Quad Core for the Masses: Introduction, Conclusion

The director of business operations at the Digital Enterprise Group said that motherboard makers are prepping Penryn mainboards to “launch at the same time with Penryn processors”.

Sources familiar with Intel’s plans say that Intel is moving 80% of its manufacturing to the 65nm node from 90nm in the first quarter. First quarter ends today, by the way.

By moving most of its products from 90nm to 65nm, the company can allegedly better focus on 45nm Penryn in the second half.

Source: DigiTimes