During Intel Developer Forum there was a lot of talk about Ivy Bridge (coming in H1 2012), and here is what we know up to now. In research and development of Ivy Bridge three teams were talking part, including one from Israel which originally designed first Core processor. As with Sandy Bridge, they are continuing their 2 chip platform (one CPU, one GPU). A bit more surprising is that it will be usable in same socket as Sandy, which wasn’t often case in past few years. New, smaller, 22 nm processes will be used, together with new, tri gate transistors. Graphic part of the chip will receive most improvements, included but not limited to full DirectX 11 compatibility. If you are familiar with Intel nomenclature Tick and Tock part of development will be familiar to you, and while CPU part is Tick, for GPU they are saying as it is Tick + as it beside smaller manufacturing process also bring some improvements architecture. It will support up to three displays at the same time, which was by Intel words very desirable to customers, and in some way giving nice credit to AMD Eyefinity technology.
 |
 |
One of the very interesting new technologies implemented will be Configurable TDP. That means that it will be possible to have multiple TDP levels within same processor part, and configuring in line with requests, cooling solution etc. Ivy Bridge processors will have three TDP options for each CPU model: the minimum TDP, the nominal TDP and the maximum TDP. It means that with proper cooling and sufficient power supply the CPU can significantly exceed its nominal frequency without any concerns for the limitations of the nominal TDP. This is something that the Turbo Boost technology the way it is today doesn’t allow, because it is closely connected with the TDP settings. The opposite is also true: if for whatever reason you need to save some power, then you can always switch the processor TDP to a lower level.
 |
 |
To further improve battery life with better power management (optimized voltage choice for all operating frequency) and low power mode, DDR3L comp ability is introduced, where it stands for Low voltage DDR3 memory support. It was specifically with Ultrabooks in mind that they decided to integrate DDR3L memory support into their current memory controller. DDR3L is the memory with lower power consumption that uses only 1.35 V voltage feed. And we are talking not just about lower signal voltages, but also about the ability to shut off I/O power to DDR memory in deep sleep states. Another new word was used – PAIR which stands for Power Aware Interrupt Routing, chooses best core to service interrupts based on its status e.g. not to wake up sleeping core if there is no need for that.
 |
 |
The biggest improvements are expected to be in Graphic chip of new Ivy Bridge. If you were asking yourself if that means that Intel continues with its two chip strategy, it does means exactly that. And while CPU chip is regular tick process (no design change, smaller production process) Intel thinks that GPU improvements are big enough to call it tick+. What is change or added you may ask? Well, a lot of things for sure. First, it will be full DirectX 11 compatible graphics, which is quite improvement comparing to now quite old DirectX 9 compatibility in available chips. Hardware Tessellation unit will be added enabling nice performance boost in latest games, as well as adding L3 cache which wasn’t all that necessary in previous architecture. This will result in roughly 60% better performance compared to current offering, and they believe that will significaly narrow gap between them and competition in GPU performance.
 |
 |
The only exact number which is publicly available at this time is the number of transistors inside the Ivy Bridge die. They will increase to 1.45 billion. It means that the upcoming processors will be 45% more complex than Sandy Bridge and a significant contribution to the transistor count will come from the graphics core. It will now occupy more than 30% of the semiconductor die.
 |
 |
One interesting question was asked during this presentation: in light of recent trend of IT companies suing each other over patents, do they think that AMD can take similar steps. It appears that last year dill to end all legal disputes between two companies is still active as Intel representative told us that “Intel and AMD won’t sue each other over patent claims”.
