Intel Announces New Processor

Intel recently announced its latest release, the Santa Rosa processor. Taking the idea of dual core processors a little further, while simultaneously improving on the single core processor, the Santa Rosa will be based on the Core Duo, but with the ability to overclock one or the other of the processor cores. Essentially, what this means is that if only one of the individual processors is in use, the other will be able to take full advantage of the resources normally shared between the two, allowing it to go much faster. It should be noted that this is not technically "overclocking" which implies setting a processor to run faster than it is designed to, something that, if done to too great a degree, can permanently damage the chip. Intel expects this processor to be a dramatic improvement over the original core duo.

The original idea of dual core processors was that since it was only possible to get a processor to run so fast, before coming up against limits of power, heat, and physical size. However, by putting multiple processors together, it is possible to get much more power for not too much more power. Intel has released the core duo to this end, and Apple has taken it so far as to create a computer with an eight core processor. However, short of adding more and more processor cores, there is a lot to be done improving single core processors. Intel has just taken a major stab at this, and has squeezed a great deal more performance out of a single core than before, but has not fundamentally changed anything. IBM, however, recently discovering a way to create three-dimensional microchips, has paved the way for processors faster than what we have by orders of magnitude. We should expect to see them out sometime next year.

Intel, however, plans to release its new chip in June. In addition to adding the overclocking capability, known as "Enhanced Dynamic Acceleration" it has improved the WIFI 802.11n cache, allowing users to wirelessly transfer data faster than before. It will not, however, use less power than its predecessor, and it will not have the integrated mobile broadband capability as originally was intended. Too few people would use it, Intel said.

Intel plans to further update this chip, releasing the "Penrin" next year. Not much has been released about this new chip, but Intel has revealed that it too will be a dual core, leading us to believe that its single core speeds will be better still.

Sources:

http://apcmag.com/5852/intel_announces_core_2_duo_on_steroids_automatic_overclocking