Intel Nehalem

Intel's Nehalem processor just might be the nail in the coffin for AMD. Released late last year, the architecture brings some tremendous changes to the microprocessor world. Keep reading to find out why it's a whole new game now.

If you have a computer, you have to have heard about Intel. Chances are that you have an Intel processor in your computer right now. They are the biggest producer of PC CPUs in the world. I'm sure you have also heard of their biggest competitor, AMD. These two companies are both in a battle for the best CPU.

Intel has recently taken the title of the fastest CPU with the Core 2 Duo series after letting the Pentium 4 line last too long. AMD has had some really hard years recently, and doesn't look to have any better platforms coming soon. If this isn't bad enough, Intel released a Core 2 Duo killer in November. Intel's code name Nehalem CPU is set to smash some records and kick some butt.

Technology

Nehalem promises to be the biggest change in architecture since the Pentium Pro. These are some serious improvements we're talking about, and the last generation wasn't bad at all, so Intel has to have some major technology behind this core.

To start off with, Nehalem is built on the same manufacturing process as the current generation, 45nm. It sports two, four, and eight cores. The quad core version has 731 million transistors. The standard die is native quad core, meaning a dual core has two cores disabled and the octacore is two dies together. This is pretty standard for Intel in their CPU manufacturing.

The CPU has 32 KB L1 instruction and 32 KB L1 data cache per core. You're looking at 256KB per core for L2 cache, and 2-3 MB per core for L3 cache. It seems a little low for Intel, but we are dealing with more cores then typical, and getting more cache will cause the CPU to be huge.

Intel also brought back a hyper-threading type of technology. It is said to be changed and shows a noticeable performance increase compared to Hyper-threading. This looks like a great CPU, and we haven't even covered the biggest changes yet.