Original URL: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/12/05/intel_45nm_roadmap/
Intel's 45nm shift will mean octo-core desktop CPUs
From 'Wolfdale' to 'Yorkfield'
Posted in Hardware, 5th December 2005 16:33 GMT
Watch Now : Virtual Machine Movement with Hyper-V
Intel isn't due to begin shipping processors produced using its 45nm process until 2008, but it's already naming the chips that will be made using the technology.
According to a list of upcoming Intel CPUs for 2006 and 2007 published [1] by Tom's Hardware Guide, the ballooning transistor budget made possible by the 45nm process will be used to drive up L2 cache sizes.
'Wolfdale' and 'Ridgefield', for example, two dual-core, single-die desktop chips due 2008, will have 3MB and 6MB of cache apiece.
These should appear alongside 'Perryville' and 'Penryn', respectively single-core and dual-core mobile parts, the former with 2MB of cache, according to the report, the latter with 3MB and 6MB of L2.
On the server side, we have 'Hapertown', an eight-core Xeon with 12MB of cache shared between the cores. It doesn't look like we're going to see a desktop CPU with eight cores until 2008/2009, with the debut of 'Yorkfield', also sporting 12MB of cache.
The same timeframe will see the debut of the quad-core 'Bloomfield', but how much cache it will contain isn't known. The same question hangs over the 'Silverthorne' mobile processor, for which we don't even have a core-count yet. ®