Sandy bridge

							            Intel - Sandy Bridge

    ‘A new processor architecture’

               George South


27-Jul-12          Sandy Bridge      1
Intel CEO Paul Otellini

• Q3 2010 we began volume production of Sandy
  Bridge and expect to ship revenue units in Q4 as
  we prepare for systems launch in the first
  quarter of 2011
• Sandy Bridge represents the largest increase in
  computing performance in our history. This is a
  truly stunning product that we can’t wait to bring
  to market. Early demand from customers is
  much greater than we originally expected and
  we anticipate a very fast ramp.
27-Jul-12             Sandy Bridge                 2
1. Introduction
• Sandy Bridge is the codename for the Intel
  microprocessor architecture which is to be
  the successor of the Nahalem architecture
• Intel say that each year a new architecture
  or a new process will be released
• This is termed tick-tock
• Sandy Bridge is a tock (a new architecture
    existing 32 nm technology)

27-Jul-12              Sandy Bridge         3
2. Sandy Bridge - details
• 2.3 GHz to 3.4 GHz clock speed
• 3.0 GHz to 3.8 GHz clock speed with Turbo Boost
  enabled
• Hyper-Threading
• 4 cores by default or more (6 and 8 ?)
• Approximate 225 mm² die size
• Without SSE: 8 DP GFLOPS/core (2 DP FP/clock), 32
  DP GFLOPS per processor
• With AVX: 32 DP GFLOPS/core (8 DP FP/clock), 128
  DP GFLOPS/processor
• 64KB L1 cache/core (32 KB L1 Data + 32 KB L1
  Instruction) (3 clocks)

27-Jul-12              Sandy Bridge                   4
3. More details
• 256KB L2 cache/core, (8 clocks)
• 8 MB shared L3 cache (25 clocks). This L3 cache will
  also be shared with the integrated graphic core.
• 64 bytes cache line width
• Integrated graphics core running at 1 GHz to 1.4 GHz
• Integrated Memory Controller with maximum 25.6 GB/s
  bandwidth, supports DDR3-1600 dual channel RAM
• 256 bit/cycle Ring bus bandwidth - the ring bus connects
  the cores
• Maximum Thermal Design Power (TDP) of 95W


27-Jul-12                Sandy Bridge                    5
4. GPU and AVX
• CPU and GPU will be on one die
• Advanced Vector Extensions (AVX) - 256-
  bit SIMD instructions
• The integrated graphics will also support
  DisplayPort for up to 2560×1600 resolution
  as well as HDMI 1.3
• DirectX 10 only supported by initial Sandy
  Bridge products
27-Jul-12          Sandy Bridge            6