Intel Sandy Bridge information

The Intel Tick-Tock machine continues to pound.

At the IDF conference in Beijing, Intel revealed some details about its next-generation desktop processors. The new CPUs will be built on a completely new architecture codenamed “Sandy Bridge” and will be manufactured with a bandwidth of 32 nm.

The Sandy Bridge promises higher performance at the same clock than its predecessors and more advanced power consumption. New features include a technology called “Advanced Vector Extensions,” but of course it will also support features introduced in previous architectures. Examples include AES-NI, Turbo Mode, and Hyper-Threading.

One of the biggest and most important innovations has been in the integrated graphics core. Surely many people remember that with the “Clarkdale” and “Arrandale” processors (i3, i5, i7), the CPU and graphics core were on the same chip, but separated from each other. This is changed by Sandy Bridge, as the graphics core is embedded in the core of the CPU and is directly connected to it via the L3 cache.

Production will begin in the fourth quarter of 2010 (Q4), so there will already be a sufficient amount on store shelves in the first quarter of next year.