Striving For A Competitive CPU And Platform Edge

Brian Dipert expounds on Sandy Bridge here.The product roadmap, mobile variations, the new micro-architecture and so on. Read for all the details. But, the Sandy Bridge has suffered a set back already. The chipset helping design processor based systems turned out to have faults in them. There has been a product call back. Thus the road map talked about here is likely to slip somewhat.

Intel's Sandy Bridge: Striving For A Competitive CPU And Platform Edge 

Wintel No More!!

 The long time partners are certainly looking around. Microsoft announced at the latest CES, this Jan, that it would release a version of Windows on ARM series processors.Other half of the partnership was busy showing off devices that use the 2nd generation core architecture processors (aka Sandy Bridge). Intel was busy promoting all kinds of devices that ran Android and Meego (Intel+Nokia promoted, Linux derivative). The devices included Google Smart TVs, set-top boxes from Boxee and Logitech, and a raft of tablets, of course. Well, the partnership has not exactly broken down, but both partners are playing the field and trying to find opportrunities in this changing marketplace.
Is the Microsoft-Intel marriage finally over? 

Intel Sandy Bridge Processor and Chipset Lineups

Intel released a range of processors and a set of chipsets to support them in building systems this week.This being called the second generation of the core micro-architecture.Features of this micro-architecture (known as the Sandy Bridge) include getting the memory controller, the PCI Express (PCIe) controller, and video functions all located within the processor die. These then can share data and power much more easily. The micro-architecture will scale from the smallest netbooks to the biggest servers. What these push performance will buy are a wide variety of actions while consuming less power. Media processing features have been polished up. Built-in DirectX 10.1 capabilities to new programming that Intel has promised will considerably improve video transcoding, photo editing, and other similar tasks (such as watching Blu-ray 3D content). A major revamping of Turbo Boost has been done to boost performance for short periods.New Advanced Vector Extensions will push floating point–intensive application performance.


Intel Sandy Bridge Processor and Chipset Lineups | News & Opinion | PCMag.com