March 18, 2008
Intel lifts curtain on upcoming CPUs

According to Information Week
Intel, which plans to enter the high-end graphics market next year with the release of the Larrabee processor, said Monday that its software development tools will take the platform above products from competitors Nvidia and Advanced Micro Device’s ATI unit.
Expected to ship to computer makers in late 2009 or early 2010, Larrabee will mark Intel’s entry into the emerging market for so-called general-purpose graphics processing units, which can handle graphics and non-graphics workloads. In addition, Larrabee, which is the codename for the Intel GPU, will launch Intel into the market for discrete graphics cards, which fit into separate slots on a motherboard and perform the graphics-intensive tasks demanded by videogames and professional video and photo editing
PCMag says
Intel operates on what it calls a “tick/tock” cycle of CPU development. The “tick” comes when it moves to a new manufacturing process, taking the current microprocessor architecture (such as Core 2 used in today’s CPUs) and moves it to smaller, faster, lower-power manufacturing. The “tock” comes when the company releases a new CPU microarchitecture, using the same manufacturing process as the old. Today you can get Core 2 CPUs built on a new 45nm process (tick), the next processor architecture on 45nm is Nehalem (tock).
















