The i7: a processor smarter than you

The AMD/Intel wars, in which AMD Athlons and Intel Pentiums were pushing 3.5 GHz, are over. … The AMD/Intel wars, in which AMD Athlons and Intel Pentiums were pushing 3.5 GHz, are over. Intel decided at that juncture that smarter was the best way to go. Its answer to the problem was to add another core to the processor. The Pentium Dual-Core and then the Core series of processors allowed Intel to boost the speed by processing more efficiently, rather than by rushing. Intel recently announced that it has gotten even smarter than the Core series. Intel’s new architecture, the i7, will provide greater processing capabilities at approximately the same price as the Core series. Coupled with a better chipset and more advanced storage technology, Intel promises that the i7 architecture will ultimately boost the performance of both home and business computers considerably. What’s so special about the i7? It corrects a fundamental problem with the Core series architecture. The Front Side Bus, or FSB, of the Core series, prevented the processor from successfully reaching its full performance potential. The FSB provides a way for the processor to communicate with the main memory. If the FSB of a processor is inefficient, even the fastest processors will be slowed. We encounter this type of problem constantly ‘mdash; with snail mail. No matter how efficient one individual might be with his job, he cannot complete it if he is constantly waiting for a package to meander its way through the U.S. Postal Service. The Core series processors sit around constantly waiting for data to meander its way through the FSB from the main memory to the processor’s on-chip memory ‘mdash; its cache ‘mdash; where it can be used efficiently and quickly for processing. The i7 architecture contains four individual processing cores. If Intel had utilized its old-style FSB, the i7 would spend a similarly worthless amount of time sitting around staring off into space. Intel invented a new way to handle its memory communications for the i7, however. Intel placed a memory controller unit on-chip, along with the four cores and their cache memories. The i7 also gives each core independent L1 and L2 caches, with an additional, shared L3 cache. Every piece of data present in the cores’ individual L1 and L2 caches is written to the shared L3 cache. This advancement allows better communication between the processing cores, reducing the need for a core to butt in on its neighbor’s business ‘- an act known as ‘cache snooping.’ This more efficient cache technology in turn reduces the amount of time the i7 has to take data from a comparatively slow main memory bank. Intel doesn’t stop there. An article on Intel’s Web site indicated that future plans for the i7 would include graphics processing units ‘mdash; GPUs ‘mdash; on-chip with the i7 processor itself. This would greatly increase a computer’s ability to render complex graphics by allowing it to quickly and efficiently keep track of millions of polygons. According to Intel spokesmen during the i7 unveiling, pairing the i7 with fast-access, solid-state disk drives will allow computers in the near future to reach unimaginably fast speeds. Coupling the processor with an Intel standard chipset, of which there will initially be only one variant, indicates that choosing the i7 computer will be simple. There will be no more having a Dell laptop with an unimaginably fast processor and a slow chipset. The i7 costs about the same as the Core 2 Quad series of processors. Although still on the top-end of computing, the i7 will certainly be within the reach of the average computer shopper. Be sure to look out for Dell and Hewlett-Packard to come out with i7-based computers very soon. Although consumers will have many processor configurations from which to choose, the unified one-chipset system will ensure that each configuration will reach its full potential.