Intel Developer Forum - New Architecture Revealed!

[K. Eng]

As many of you are already aware, Intel's next mobile processor, code-named Merom, is due out later this year. The Merom core is the basis for Conroe and Woodcrest, which are server parts.

The folks at AnandTech have some good articles:

link

more

And more, with Conroe benchmarks

I was impressed with Yonah, but the Conroe benchmarks at 2.66 GHz are mindblowing Merom is said to be 12-20% faster per clock than Yonah, which may be of interest to you folks who need all that computing firepower.

[K. Eng]

Realworldtech has posted an excellent article on the high-level details of the Core Microarchitecture:

link

Compared to Yonah, Merom has a ton more execution resources, and some new tricks (Macro-Ops fusion in addition to uOps fusion, Memory Disambiguation) to keep things humming along.

It's a good read, although it might be confusing for those not familiar with the P6 architecture that is the basis for Yonah.

[DavidNZ]

Excellent. Some impressive stuff, to be sure. By the time Merom is available, I'll be looking to replace my X40. Hopefully it'll be a X61 or even an X70. Maybe wireless USB or some form of a Personal Area Network will be available by then as well. Excellent...

[ThinkPad R]

I was impressed with Yonah, but the Conroe benchmarks at 2.66 GHz are mindblowing Merom is said to be 12-20% faster per clock than Yonah, which may be of interest to you folks who need all that computing firepower.

You know that IBM's PowerPC 6 architecture or "G6" (too sad that Apple switched to Intel) can go up to 4GHz and it's not dual core?

[K. Eng]

You know that IBM's PowerPC 6 architecture or "G6" (too sad that Apple switched to Intel) can go up to 4GHz and it's not dual core?

What in the world does this have to do with Intel's new architecture? And it's not PowerPC 6, it's Power6, which is meant for high end server and scientific computing applications. A G6 equivalent would have to be heavily stripped down in size and capability to meet a reasonable price point.

Apple switched to Intel precisely because they saw where Intel was headed - higher performing yet energy efficient processors. If you look at SpecINT scores, the Intel x86 and x64 stuff blows the PPC970 (G5) out of the water.