First the Tick, Now the Tock: Next Generation Intel Microarchitecture - Nehalem

eNext generation Intel microarchitecture (Nehalem) is the next step in Intel's continuing success in leading the industry in processor performance and energy efficiency. In fact, it represents another big leap in performance and energy efficiency, similar to the leap made by Intel Core microarchitecture over the first 90nm Intel Pentium M processors. Next generation Intel microarchitecture (Nehalem) continues Intel's philosophy of focusing on improvements in how the processor uses available clock cycles and power, rather than just pushing up ever higher clock speeds and energy needs. The goal is to do more in the same power envelope - or even reduced envelopes. In turn, like its Intel Core microarchitecture predecessor, next generation Intel microarchitecture (Nehalem) includes the ability to process up to four instructions per clock cycle on a sustained basis compared to just three instructions per clock cycle or less processed by other processors. However, the next generation microarchitecture's biggest innovations come from new optimizations of the individual cores and the overall multi-core microarchitecture to increase single-thread and multithread performance.

The next generation microarchitecture's performance and power management innovations include:

Dynamically managed cores, threads, cache, interfaces, and power.Simultaneous multi-threading (SMT) for enabling a more energy efficient means of increasing performance for multi-threaded workloads. The next generation microarchitecture's SMT capability enables running two simultaneous threads per core - an amazing eight simultaneous threads per quad-core processor and 16 simultaneous threads for dual-processor quad-core designs.Innovative extensions to the Intel Streaming SIMD Extensions 4 (SSE4) that center on enhancing XML, string, and text processing performance.Superior multi-level cache, including an inclusive shared L3 cache.New high-end system architecture that delivers from two to three times more peak bandwidth and up to four times more realized bandwidth (depending on configuration) as compared to today's Intel Xeon processors.Performance-enhanced dynamic power management.

On the design side, next generation Intel microarchitecture (Nehalem) enables optimal price/performance/energy efficiency for each market segment through:

Scalable performance for from one-to-16 (or more) threads and from one-to-eight (or more) cores.Scalable and configurable system interconnects and integrated memory controllers.High-performance integrated graphics engine for client platforms.

Read this paper and get a look at how the next generation microarchitecture's dynamically scalable and design-scalable features directly contribute to power efficiency and performance.

Vendor:

Intel Corporation

Posted:

Feb 8, 2021

Published:

Apr 2, 2009

Format:

PDF

Type:

White Paper