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Hardware Intel 45nm "Penryn" Tape-Out Runs Windows
Sven Olsen (Blog) - January 10, 2007 2:13 AM
Print E-mail del.icio.us 83 comment(s) - last by SacredFist.. on Jan 30 at 10:07 PM

Intel engineers celebrate after "Penryn" boots Windows
Intel's 45nm CPUs might get here sooner than later

Sources inside Intel have confirmed the company recently received the taped-out 45nm Penryn processor.  Reports from the ensuing champagne toast claim the first Penryn boot was capable of booting Windows.

Even though the processor is labeled as "A0" silicon, or first revision, the successful boot is a huge milestone and bonus for Intel.  Reports of operational first-run tape-outs are few and far in-between, especially in the CPU industry.

Penryn, the 45nm optical-shrink of the Core architecture, was prepped for tape-out in late November, and returned to the Intel development team just a few weeks ago. 

The early tape-out may even have beneficial consequences further down the line.  Any early progress will pull the launch date in several weeks, though Intel has not publicaly stated a target date for launch.  The latest Intel roadmaps claim Penryn is simply a "late 2007" processor.

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feeling the squeeze
By Spoelie on 1/10/2007 4:42:27 AM , Rating: 5
AMD should be feeling pretty squeezed at the moment. I have every confidence in their ability to compete and outdo Intel in chip design, but if they, from this point on, will always be a process node behind, it's still almost impossible to compete. The reason why the 90nm AM2 processors didn't extend the performance of the cores, is because between the dual cores, the new memory controllers, the new virtualization etc. features, they are on too tight a transistor budget. That's why they so desperately need the die shrinks to happen.

Intel had that transistor budget from the beginning of last year (launch of Yonah), while AMD will only ship some proper 65nm in the middle of this year, one and a half years behind. And by that time, Intel will be on the verge of increasing their transistor budget another time, if their schedule isn't overly optimistic.

I'll always have a special place for AMD, but they better do not screw up on their execution the coming year.




RE: feeling the squeeze
By Brand0 on 1/10/2007 5:26:35 AM , Rating: 2
I agree. AMD was dominating the gaming processor market but is now playing catch-up. They need to pull it together.


RE: feeling the squeeze
By BladeVenom on 1/10/2007 7:05:34 AM , Rating: 5
You need to give AMD some time. Look how long it took Intel to come out with something better than AMD's Athlon 64s.


RE: feeling the squeeze
By nah on 1/10/2007 8:09:10 AM , Rating: 1
AMD has been the leader since Athlon's debut in 1999--test after test showed that it beat the heck out of the orig P IIIs--even with the Coppermines it had a 33 % advantage in FP ops--if it wasn't SSE optimised ( the old 3Ds Max 6)--they repeated this in 2003 with the Athlon 64--Intel responded finally in 2006(sigh)--can AMD repeat this trend over the next year with K8L---lets see


RE: feeling the squeeze
By Master Kenobi (blog) on 1/10/2007 8:30:34 AM , Rating: 1
quote:
AMD has been the leader since Athlon's debut in 1999

Leader of what?


RE: feeling the squeeze
By Samus on 1/10/2007 8:43:16 AM , Rating: 3
Well...performance. duh.


RE: feeling the squeeze
By Master Kenobi (blog) on 1/10/2007 8:46:51 AM , Rating: 3
quote:
Well...performance. duh.

The word "performance" makes a huge difference in the validity of his statement. When your leading in a race that is measured by many factors, its a good idea to state exactly what your leading in.


RE: feeling the squeeze
By ScythedBlade on 1/10/2007 5:25:46 PM , Rating: 3
Performance ...

Well, actually, Intel creamed AMD almost entirely with Northwood. They actually took back the performance crown until A64 came out. Of course, even when A64s came out, they were pretty much tied. Intel was better for comiling stuff, while AMD was better for gaming, in that area. For a while, there wasn't too much of a clear winner until the first tier dual cores.

However, the Core 2 Duos were a definitely a different story. They outright won like crazy.


RE: feeling the squeeze
By ScythedBlade on 1/10/2007 9:38:38 PM , Rating: 2
... I got voted down for stating the truth? Sucks ...
But technically, its true. Pentium 4's owned in media creationg (all except LAME Mp3, which was single threaded). Anyway, I would post links, but that guy already did.


RE: feeling the squeeze
By Pirks on 1/11/07, Rating: 0
RE: feeling the squeeze
By mindless1 on 1/11/2007 7:17:23 PM , Rating: 2
No, technically it's misleading. Joe Benchmarker likes to use new premium software to show off the latest CPU but nevermind if that is what the end users were running. Further, I would speculate that most people are not spending the bulk of their time content-creating. It's somewhat surprising that not so many people even consider this issue, as if we are compelled to change everything to revolve around the CPU we bought.


RE: feeling the squeeze
By ScythedBlade on 1/30/2007 10:06:31 PM , Rating: 2
XD, the key word here is "technically"


RE: feeling the squeeze
By InsaneScientist on 1/27/2007 2:54:49 PM , Rating: 2
Well, sorta....
The Northwood P4s as a whole did cream AMD in encoding (of any sort), but they didn't really take back the all around performance crown until the Revision where P4s with 800MHz FSBs started showing up... (Revision C, I think?)
IMHO, that was when they really took the crown back. They were close before, but it wasn't really until then that they actually surpassed the Athlon XPs.

With the majority of the Athlon 64s, especially the more recent revisions, the lead that the P4s/PDs had over the A64s/X2s in encoding wasn't as significant as the A64/X2's lead over the P4/D in just about everything else... (With the early Athlon 64s, the P4 did have a huge lead in encoding) so they weren't quite equal, but I don't think that Intel really ever allowed AMD to relax.

And then Core2 came out and massacred everything. ;)


RE: feeling the squeeze
By SacredFist on 1/30/2007 10:07:51 PM , Rating: 2
of gaming you mean


RE: feeling the squeeze
By StevoLincolnite on 1/10/2007 9:25:25 AM , Rating: 4
http://www.aceshardware.com/read.jsp?id=55000281
http://www.anandtech.com/showdoc.aspx?i=1834&p=8
http://www.anandtech.com/showdoc.aspx?i=1595&p=6
http://www.anandtech.com/showdoc.aspx?i=1615&p=13
http://www.aceshardware.com/read.jsp?id=55000281
http://www.tomshardware.com/2003/06/23/bidding_adi...

Pentium 4 3.2ghz vs Athlon XP 3200. (AThlon 64 wasnt released.
And actually your wrong about the Pentium 3, The Pentium 3 coppermine managed to beat the Athlon in most tests, That is until AMD moved the cache on die.
The Pentium 3 vs Athlon was never clear cut, Alot of technology's were brought in.

So no, AMD hasn't been the leader for 7 - 8 years.


RE: feeling the squeeze
By Master Kenobi (blog) on 1/10/2007 10:11:33 AM , Rating: 2
I believe its more in line with a 4-5 year lead.


RE: feeling the squeeze
By gramboh on 1/10/2007 1:01:37 PM , Rating: 2
Nope, 4 years ago the Northwood P4 "C" was the best performing CPU. AMD had the lead for roughly 2.5-3 years with A64 until Core 2 Duo came out.


RE: feeling the squeeze
By Master Kenobi (blog) on 1/10/2007 4:46:40 PM , Rating: 2
I stand corrected then.


RE: feeling the squeeze
By Tsuwamono on 1/12/2007 12:02:04 AM , Rating: 2
no, you were correct initially. You just failed to state which field they had the lead in. Gaming performance AMD has been better since Athlon XP. I would almost say since Athlon with the 900mhz core. I had one of those with a 9600 and it beat my buddys P3 and then when he upgraded to P4(i think it was one of the originals) it still ended up pretty close but my Athlon 900mhz still came out on top in gaming.

You could argue its the mobo or ram or whatever but all i know is my Athlon 900Mhz with the same video card as him was producing a better FPS then his Early P4 and late P3