Penryn and Nehalem revealed: more info on Intel's future CPU's

Penryn: 6 MB cache and SSE4

A few features of the Penryn were already known to the public, as Intel promised higher clock speeds and more L2 cache once the new proces was implemented. It is also already known that the Penryn will have 50-odd new instructions that have been dubbed SSE4. However we have found out a lot more...

Let's start with the clock speeds, we do not know the excat speeds the Penrynn will be introduced at, but we do know that the slowest model will wun at more than 3GHz. The Front Side Bus (FSB) will be increased as well, server and workstation processors will run at a 1600MHz FSB, and we think the desktop models will run at at least 1333MHz FSB.

We have also found out that the L2 cache on the dual core Penryn will be increased to 6MB, 50% more than the corrent dual core range by Intel. Like the current Core 2 Quad the quad croes based on Penrynns will be two dual core chips placed on one die, so the quad core Penrynn CPU's will have no less than 12MB of L2 cache.

There is still more, Intel did inform us earlier that the new SSE4 instructions that are mainly aimed at increasing speeds in multimedia applications will be introduced in the Penrynn, but they will also implement a Super Shuffle Engine, that should increase performance in multimedia instructions by shuffling data around and process these faster.

Another new feature is the Fast Radix-16 Divider. This technology will speed up instructions that entail number divisions. Calculations like these are now processed two bits at a time, but with this new technology this will be increased to 4 bits. Virtualisations is also sped up, a new version of the technology will make the switching between two simultaneous virtual installations a lot faster, decreasing the performance drops that now are a direct result of virtualization.

Also on the energy efficient side there are improvements, Deep Power Down Technology will allow processos to use less power when not in use (completely). A more interesting technology is the Enhanced Intel Dynamic Acceleration Technology. This will allow a dual core processor to completely shut down one core when single core applications are run and simultaneously speed up the other core to allow for the performance loss this brings. For instance, if you have a 2.93 GHz dual core processor running a single threaded game teh second core will not be used. The new Penrynn processor will shut down one core in this instance, but speed up the other core to over 3GHz.

This technology might mean that processors will get a dual rating in future, one that indicates the frequency when working with two cores and one that indicates the single core speed.