Bridge to the Future

Performance skyrocketed, too efficient power consumption. Intel Sandy Bridge is the most recent proof of the dominance of Intel in the processor world.

Sandy Bridge is the name does not refer to a place, but still reflects the vision and mission through the Sandy Bridge Intel: a bridge to a new era of processor.

What is Sandy Bridge

Naturally, if Intel’s new microarchitecture want to associate them with the name of the bridge. The reason, Sandy Bridge is the biggest change since the era of Intel Pentium 4, which qualifies as a bridge to the new world.

Update Sandy Bridge is most important is to realize the concept of fusion processor, aka the processor that brings together all the components into a piece of the processor. It is arguably the culmination of a strategy “to move all the supporting components of the northbridge to the processor” that made Intel since 2 years ago.

On the generation of Bloomfield processors, they include memory controller. In Lynnfield, turn to PCI-E controller. In the era of Clarkdale, turns the onboard graphics chip is integrated into the processor.

But some are actually still a separate component in some silicon-only “knitted” course into a processor. Well, that’s what Intel Destroy in Sandy Bridge. All the components in the Sandy Bridge processor is in a piece of silicon, there is no separate again.

You may ask, why Intel painstakingly assembled all the components into the processor? The answer is because the system work more quickly and efficiently thanks to the integrated system like this.

Similar analogy as an independent city as housing, offices, hospitals, and all means of life are in one area. With only the “road” for a while, all the data and instructions are up to the processing unit inside the processor.

Here’s the contents of a piece of Sandy Bridge processors. There are 995 million transistors on a piece of silicon measuring 216mm2, consisting of the processor core, graphics chip, L3 cache, and System Agent.] In the Sandy Bridge, a trip data even more quickly because all units are in one of silicon. Moreover, Intel makes interconnection alias new road that connects all the components, ranging from the processor chip, graphics chip, until the cache.

Interconnection-called Ring Bus is like the road toll for the trip data to the entire unit because it has a speed of up to 384 GB / s with minimal latency.

Another advantage of the system is to decrease power consumption and core size, especially with the fabrication of 32 nm is used Sandy Bridge.

If calculated, with a four-core Sandy Bridge have 995 million transistors, but the die size of only 216 mm2. Compare with its predecessor, Lynnfield, which “only” has 296 million transistors, but has a die size of 296 mm2.

The components in the silicon itself Sandy Bridge is approximately the same as Nehalem.

The first course core processors. Sandy Bridge On this first generation, the number of core number 2 and 4, followed by the next generation who have 6 and 8 core. Each core has a L2 cache of 256 KB. Working L2 cache assisted assisted level 3 cache (L3 cache) that is used along with the size varied between 3-8 MB (depending on the segmentation). While PCI Express, DMI, and the memory controller and display interface is gathered in one area called the System Agent.

But integration is also leaving a negative effect. In the Nehalem era, the clock generator (which regulate the working frequency components) is individual. That is, there is a clock generator for each component, whether it be the processor, memory, USB, SATA, and other components on the motherboard. So we can overclock by adjusting the frequency base clock (Bclk) of each component.

In Sandy Bridge, only one clock generator and set the frequency at 100 MHz for all components. As a result, increase the frequency of the processor will raise the memory frequency, SATA, and other components. This makes overclocking through Bclk becomes very difficult. The increase in numbers 5-6 MHz alone will make the USB and SATA components to strike work.

By Sandy Bridge, Intel again proves the power of their processors. A series of tests we did show Core i7-2600K has amazing performance, at least for the processor in the class $ 300. He beat the Core i7-870 is a previous winner, and the far left AMD Phenom II X6 1100T which is actually the best AMD processor at this time.

Performance is also shown remarkable HD3000 graphics chip. With equal ability of entry-level graphics card, Core i7-based system performs a complete 2600K. Our increasingly impressive, all these features are presented with lower power consumption, its best for gamers that want high quality 3d, and game performane. But we know its not cheap gaming computers …