Intel's Sandy Bridge Architecture Exposed
by Anand Lal Shimpi on September 14, 2010 4:10 AM EST- Posted in
- CPUs
- Intel
- Sandy Bridge
Final Words
Intel is trying out a new approach to sharing information about its technologies. In an attempt to surprise the market (and potentially positively impact stock price), Intel is keeping details on upcoming products quiet until it gets closer to launch. This is why we didn’t hear about Sandy Bridge until after we were able to preview its performance a couple of weeks ago. I can’t say I’m a fan of the new approach, but it does make things a little more exciting.
And exciting Sandy Bridge is. The CPU architecture itself doesn’t look too revolutionary. These are the sorts of improvements we’ve come to expect from Intel from one generation to the next. The out of order execution window grew as did all associated buffers. Thanks to some significant redesigns in hardware Intel was able to increase branch prediction accuracy and FP execution throughput all while making the chip more energy efficient.
Improved turbo will surely be appreciated. More aggressive turbo bins plus the ability to turbo up above TDP limits for short periods of time will help make PCs feel more responsive even when doing relatively benign tasks. Things like launching applications, loading web pages or just opening new window stand to benefit.
The architecture sounds a lot like Intel simply did Nehalem/Westmere better. Over time you come up with newer, better ways to do things and that’s ultimately what Sandy Bridge looks like - a better, more efficient way to do what Conroe, Nehalem and Westmere did before it.
The more dramatic changes happened outside of the cores. GPU performance is clearly an important Sandy Bridge feature as we’ve already shown. I can’t help but be curious about how far Intel could take its SNB graphics subsystem if it simply scaled up the number of EUs. The media processing engine, particularly with the video transcode support is very exciting. Assuming image quality is maintained and there’s good software support at launch, this could very well be Sandy Bridge’s killer feature. The ability to transcode at over 10x real time on everything from a desktop to a notebook is just awesome. With good software support, SNB’s video transcode engine could effectively stop consumer GPU based video encoding in its tracks. The improved video decode engine is also a welcome addition to the Sandy Bridge architecture.
Connecting it all together we have Sandy Bridge’s ring bus. Generally microprocessor designs don’t undergo such a radical changes unless the design will be used for a while to come. The ring bus sounds very scalable and should support growth in core count, L3 cache and GPU performance. This may end up being the base architecture that takes us from multi-core to many core.
Mobile Sandy Bridge is significantly faster than Arrandale/Clarksfield
Sandy Bridge will ship in Q1 2011 for both notebooks and desktops and from what we’ve heard, pricing will be very compelling. If you're interested in a sneak peak of Sandy Bridge's performance, take a look at our preview here.
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beginner99 - Tuesday, September 14, 2010 - link
AMD's been taking about fusion forever but I can't get rid of the feeling that this Intel implementation will be much more "fused" than the AMD one will be. AMD barley has CPU turbo so adding a comined cpu/gpu turbo at once, maybe they can pull it off but experience makes me doubt that very much.BTW, if it takes like 3mm^2 for a super fast video encoder I ask my self, why wasn't this done before?
duploxxx - Tuesday, September 14, 2010 - link
first or not, doesn't really matter.who says AMD need's GPU turbo? If Liano really is a 400SP GPU it will knock any Intel GPU with or without turbo.
If we see the first results of Anadtech review which seems to be a GT2 part it doesn't have a chance at all.
core i5 is really castrated due to lack of HT, This is exactly where liano will fight against, with a bit less cpu power.
B3an - Tuesday, September 14, 2010 - link
Even if AMD's GPU in Liano is faster, intels GPU is finally decent and good enough for most people, but more importantly more people will care about CPU performance because most users dont play games and this GPU can more than easily handle HD video. And i'm sure SB will be faster than anything AMD has. Then throw in the AVX and i'd say Intel clearly have a better option for the vast majority of people, it just comes down to price now.B3an - Tuesday, September 14, 2010 - link
Sorry, didnt mean AVX, i meant the hardware accelerated video encoding.bitcrazed - Tuesday, September 14, 2010 - link
But it's not just about raw power - it's about power per dollar.If you've got $500 to spend on a mobo and CPU, where do you spend it? On a slower Intel platform or on a faster AMD platform?
If AMD get their pricing right, they could turn this into a no-brainer decision, greatly increasing their sales.
duploxxx - Tuesday, September 14, 2010 - link
now here comes the issue with the real fanboys:"And i'm sure SB will be faster than anything AMD has."
It's exactly price where AMD has the better option. It's people " known brand name" that keeps them at buying the same thing without knowledge... yeah lets buy a Pentium.
takeulo - Wednesday, September 15, 2010 - link
hahahahah yeah i agree AMD is the better option at all if i have the high budget i'll go for Insane i mean Intel but since im only "poor" and i cant afford it so i'll stick to AMD and my money worth itsorry for my bad english XD
MySchizoBuddy - Monday, December 20, 2010 - link
how do you know Intel GPU has reached good enough state (do you have benchmarks to support your hypothesis). they have been trying to reach this state for as long as i can remember.your good enough state might be very different that somebodies else's good enough state.
bindesh - Tuesday, September 20, 2011 - link
Your all doubts will be cleared after watching this video, and related once.http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XqBk0uHrxII&fea...
I am having 3 AMDs and 1 Intel, Believe me with the price of AMD CPUs, i can only get a celeron in Intel. Which cannot run NFS SHIFT. Or TIme Shift. But other hand, with AMD athlon, i have completed Devil May Cry 4 with decent speed. And the laptop costs 24K, Toshiba C650, psg xxxxx18 model. It has 360 GB SSD, ATI 4200HD.
Can you get such price and performance with Intel?
Best part is that i am running it with 800MHz cpu speed, with performance much much greater than 55K intel dual core laptop of my friend.
vlado08 - Tuesday, September 14, 2010 - link
Still no word ont the 23.976 FPS play back?