CPU roadmap: 2007 and beyond
Published: 19 Mar 2007
Q2 2007
Not long after its Athlon 64 X2 processors toppled Intel's Pentium D chips, AMD found itself back in the familiar role of underdog when Intel moved to its 65-nanometer process and released the Core 2 Duo to universal praise last year. AMD introduced its first 65nm desktop chips at the end of 2006 with an update to its Athlon 64 X2 line. Throughout the rest of the first half of the year, AMD will continue to roll out 65nm Athlon 64 X2 parts, possibly with faster clock speeds (one of the benefits of reduced power consumption).
Dip your toes in Bearlake
Sometime this spring or early summer — the company has yet to pin an exact date on it — Intel will introduce a new chipset, which it's developing under the code name Bearlake. Intel did tell us the chipset will feature a 1,333MHz front-side bus and support for faster memory including DDR2-800 and DDR3-1333; new Core 2 Duo processors — Core 2 Duo E6650, E6750 and E6850 — will be introduced at the same time that will support the faster front-side bus. The Bearlake chipset family will be divided into the P series, which will have a dedicated PCI Express graphics port, and the G series, which will feature an integrated graphics chip.
Bearlake chipset families
| Supported memory | Frontside bus | Graphics | |
| Intel X38 | DDR3-1333 | 1333MHz | PCI Express 2.0 |
| Intel P35 | DDR2-800, DDR3-1066 | 1333MHz | PCI Express |
| Intel G35 | DDR2-800, DDR3-1066 | 1333MHz | integrated |
| Intel G33 | DDR2-800, DDR3-1066 | 1333MHz | integrated |
As with AMD's recently announced 690 chipset, the G35 chipset will come with HDCP support, making it easy for motherboard manufacturers to pair it with an HDMI video output. We also expect that the integrated graphics chip on the Intel G35 chipset (if not the G33 as well) will be DirectX 10 compatible, although we anticipate that using graphically demanding applications with an integrated graphics chip will remain a less-than-ideal experience.
In addition, Intel will expand its mainstream Core 2 Quad desktop chips by adding the Core 2 Quad Q6400 to its lineup in June. With new software coming out that demonstrates definite performance benefits from four processing cores, our hunch is this June release of a relatively lower cost quad-core chip will begin to convince users that four cores really can help mainstream performance.
Movement on the mobile front
Intel will announce a new mobile platform this quarter, code-named Santa Rosa (some sources claim it will be released as Centrino Pro), built around its existing lineup of Core 2 Duo processors — although rumour has it the company will release a high-end 2.4GHz version of the processor to coincide with the platform launch. Intel promises that the platform's new chipset, code-named Crestline, will bring improved integrated graphics performance;reportedly this performance enhancement will come as a result of an 800MHz front-side bus. Other elements of Santa Rosa include the Kedron wireless card, which will feature 802.11n interoperability, as well as integrated options for 3G and WiMax connectivity.
All of those features sound enticing, but the most exciting development with Santa Rosa might be its new Robson caching technology. Essentially a quantity of NAND flash memory that's incorporated into the motherboard, Robson stores a cache of commonly accessed information, such as the operating system and software, so you can boot the computer or launch applications without spinning the hard drive.
Intel gave a demo of a Robson-equipped notebook at its Intel Developer Forum in late 2005. The early sample reportedly booted instantly and took only seconds to start up common applications. More recently, an Intel representative told us that Robson cuts load and resume times in half, and because the hard drive motor spins less often, also saves 0.4W on power. That may not sound like much, but, depending on factors such as screen size and optical drives, it could bring as much as 20 additional minutes of battery life.
Mobile platforms
| Associated technologies | Supported memory | Networking | |
| INTEL | |||
| Intel Centrino (2005 - early 2007) |
Core Solo, Core Duo, and Core 2 Duo processors, Intel Mobile Express chipset | DDR2-667 | 802.11 a/b/g wireless |
| Intel Santa Rosa (Q2 2007) |
Crestline chipset with 800MHz FSB, 2.4GHz Core 2 Duo processor, Robson caching technology | DDR2-800 | Kedron 802.11n wireless, 3G, WiMax |
| AMD | |||
| AMD Kite (2006-early 2007) |
90nm Turion 64, Turion 64 X2, and Sempron processors, DVI support | DDR2-667 | 802.11a/b/g wireless |
| AMD Kite refresh (Q2 2007) |
65nm Hawk processors, hybrid hard drives, hybrid graphics, HDMI support | DDR2-800 | Draft N wireless, WWAN support |
AMD also will see enhancements to its platform, code-named Kite, this quarter. Because AMD's platform is less strictly integrated than Intel's (the company describes it as an 'open ecosystem', allowing notebook manufacturers to choose the wireless and graphics elements of the platform), the Kite refresh will be centered around a new processor family, code-named Hawk. The new processors will mark AMD's transition to a 65nm manufacturing process for mobile CPUs and will support high-performance, 800MHz DDR2 memory. The company also promises that Kite will include a chipset with HDMI support as well as support for 802.11 Draft-N wireless solutions (AMD's next mobile platform will support the final 802.11n standard, which is expected to be ratified in April 2009).
AMD presented a roadmap at an analyst day in December 2006 that also implied that Kite could make room for hybrid hard drives, which incorporate flash chips for fast data access, and hybrid graphics, which let you switch from a discrete graphics card (maximum performance) to an integrated graphics card (maximum battery life). According to some reports, the hybrid graphics solution will automatically switch from discrete to integrated graphics when the system is unplugged.
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