Via Intel Press Conference: Today Intel previewed their roadmap for the next two generations of CPU’s to the press. First up is Penryn. Penryn is expected later this year in the 3rd or 4th quarter. This is a 45nm chip and is a little more than just a die shrink from the current Core 2 Duo chips. New features implemented with Penryn include:

• A superior microarchitecture featuring many enhancements over the base Core architecture
  
• Higher performance at current levels and even greater frequencies overall
  
• New SSE4 for better gaming and graphics performance
  
• Increased cache’s and quicker bus rates, up to 6MB and 12MB
  
• Increased number division capabilities doubling previous divider speed with Radix 16
  

One of the factors of this increase in performance will be the 45nm High-K gate technology which will allow for more transistors, a 20% increase in transistor switching which allows for more instructions per clock. This new die shrink will also allow for less power leakage and thus less power used with faster speeds than the current 65nm Intel Core Microarchitecture. Following up the Penryn release in 2008 will be Nehalem, a revamped architecture from Intel built on the 45nm process featuring an on-die memory controller which should allow for high performance at very low latency. Other features of Nehalem include:

• Native DDR3 support
  
• Dynamically managed cores, threads, cache, interfaces and power
  
• Synchronized multi-threading much like Intel’s previous Hyper Threading technology
  
• Multi-level shared cache via Intel’s Smart Cache Technology
  
• Scalable performance 1-16+ threads, 1-8+ cores and scalable cache sizes (2 threads per core)
  

It is becoming clear that Intel is no longer resting on their laurels much like they did with the Netburst architecture. Also mentioned were the 32nm die shrink in ’09 with Westmere and the next engineering change after that, Gesher, which will also be 32nm and is projected for 2010. With a microarchitecture change every two years they are planning to stay competitive with anything their rivals have to offer.

Penryn of course is on the forefront with its release later this year. With the Intel Core chips already dominating the marketplace and Penryn ready sooner than originally expected, we have to ask: Will AMD be up to the challenge? Their Barcelona chips will have to be solid performers considering Intel’s already sizable lead.

It’s also interesting to note Nehalem’s integrated memory controller, a feature that had given AMD’s CPU’s an edge for some time before the ICM chips from Intel arrived. Intel noted in the past how beneficial AMD’s on chip memory controller was and they have since engineered one into their own CPU dies. In a Q&A session during the press conference with Pat Gelsinger of Intel's Digital Enterprise Group, it was asked whether Intel was taking a page out of AMD's book with this new memory controller. In response to this question, Mr. Gelsinger said that the move is more of a natural progression towards less sockets on the motherboard. Will Intel pull off the on-die memory controller as well as AMD did allowing for super low latencies?

Stay tuned to GotFrag as we continue to give you up-to-date coverage and hopefully some reviews later down the road when these processors come to market.