Last calendar week , you probably noticed newfangled electronic computer fromDell , Gateway and othersusing a brand new , bizarre - vocalize chip from Intel : the Core i7 . You might have even seensome bench mark and featuresshowing that this is a real beast of processor . Well , we ’re somewhat mad about the Core i7 , so here ’s a quick guide to why it ’s so awful :
https://gizmodo.com/intel-nehalem-chip-moniker-begets-core-i7-branding-5035279
Hokay , so the path Intel develops scrap is on what it calls the“tick - tock cycle ” . The “ check ” is the improvement of its current microarchitecture , chiefly recoil it down to make it more energy efficient , along with other tweak . As you now can imagine , the “ tock ” point the launch of a completely new microarchitecture .
Penryn , for instance , was the tick to the Core 2 ’s tock , shrinking it down from a 65 - nanometer process to 45 nm . Core i7 is a tock , using a whole new microarchitecturecodenamed Nehalem . Core i7 Nehalem is actually a striking dance step forward , remedying several hover Intel computer architecture want that AMD actually had them outsmart on long time ago . So , here are four thing that specifically make the new chip awesome :
https://gizmodo.com/giz-explains-whats-the-f-is-a-penryn-335090
Bye Bye Front - Side Bus
The ancient front - side bus apparatus has long been a drag on Intel ’s potato chip , and they ’re eventually trench it . The FSBessentially carried databetween the CPU and memory controller hub ( which is also out the window , more on that in a sec ) , but that did n’t forge so well when you started talking buckets of cores . In its place is a new technical school calledQuickPath Interconnectthat’ll make the onetime bottleneck chronicle and course gobs of cores even better . QPI utilise direct dot - to - decimal point connections that have abandwidth of about 25GB / s , style faster than what FSB could offer . The downside is that it ask a new QPI - friendly motherboard . This conception is kind of cribbed from AMD , whose HyperTransporthas been doing something similar for a longass prison term .
Integrated Memory Controller and Triple - Channel Memory
You might note a pattern that a lot of Nehalem ’s public presentation boosts have to do with better admittance to computer storage and fatter bandwidth . Yet another tech that AMD held over Intel ’s foreland for class is anintegrated memory controller , which Core i7 finally uses . Basically this just means that thememory controlleris on the same die as the CPU , cutting down memory latency . Before , with Intel chips , communication had to take place across the front - side bus , making stuff slooooow . The last memory board fillip is that Core i7 support triplex - channel computer storage . Right now , you ’re probably on a computer using dual - TV channel memory ( in English , I think that it uses RAM sticks in solidification of two ) . Core i7 will make three stick of RAM the novel standard — so keep an eye out for plenty of 6 GB and 12 GB systems running around .
The Return of Hyper - Threading
Intel abandonedHyper - Threadingafter the Pentium 4 , but it ’s back in Core i7 ( and Atom , but really , psh ) . Basically , it ’s a parallel - processing tech that runs multiple threads simultaneously . In English , it divvies up task so they can be crunched by a processor simultaneously , instead of one after the other . It forgetful , itmakes video encoding and other parallel - friendly processes run faster . We ’re interested to see what kind of gains this will create in tandem bicycle with programs encrypt to take vantage of threading , not to mention the next large operating systems , Snow Leopard and Windows 7 , which will supposedly make better use of multiple cores and parallel processing than current OS .
build - In Power Management and Overclocking
Core i7 is pretty much a beast already , but whereas Intel used to say that overclocking was bad for your mainframe , now with the Core i7,it ’s built right in . The Core i7 is really aggressive with superpower direction , more so than Core 2 , so it ’ll sip succus when it ’s not busybodied , and then crank up the mightiness when it ask it . In the BIOS now , you’re able to set it to overclock the CPU in certain situations , and custom-make that by thermal military rating so it wo n’t overheat .
So yeah , Core i7 gets our engines running , and we ’re not even fleck wonk . ( Honest ! ) deplorably though , right now there are just a few Core i7 chips available , and they ’re all for desktops . There ’s not much of a downside for portables — save for the need for new motherboards and the DDR3 RAM already used by premium laptop computer — but before you see it in a Dell XPS notebook computer or MacBook Pro , you ’re going to see it in a tidy sum of desktop gaming and artwork - intensive systems . Laptops probably wo n’t seem until way into next twelvemonth , but we think they ’ll be well deserving the wait .
Something you still wanna know ? Send any questions about chips , Pringles or the Hillary Swank moving picture The Core to[email protected ] , with “ Giz Explains ” in the subject line .
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