Intel launches world’s first 45nm processors

Intel extended its lead in microprocessors today by launching the world’s first 45nm microprocessors. Along with the new “Penryn” 45nm processors being launched today, Intel is also launching the “Seaburg” chipset designed for the HPC (High Performance Computing) chipset which is timed perfectly with this week’s supercomputing conference. Both the new processor and chipset will officially be called the 5400 series processor and chipset.

The new 5400 series processor is built on a brand new 45nm process using High-K dielectrics and dramatically cuts power consumption. Its key performance enhancements over the previous generation Intel 65nm processors are higher clock speeds, 50% more level-2 cache, enhanced SSE3, brand new SSE4 instruction set which can double the performance of video encoding, enhanced dividers. The following is a table of the new server and HPC workstation processors launched today. Note that the FSB 1600 models are designed for the new 5400 series chipset whereas the FSB 1333 and 1066 models will work on the existing 5300 series chipset which Intel launched back in mid 2006.

The new 5400 series chipset supports 128 MBs of Fully Buffered DDR2-800 whereas the older 5300 series chipset only supported Fully Buffered DDR2-667. The new chipset also features a 50% larger 24 MB snoop filter which allows for more efficient cache indexing.

Source: ZDNet Blogs