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Intel likely to reveal details of Silverthorne next week |
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Written by Daniel
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Tuesday, 29 January 2008 |
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Rumored characteristics of Silverthorne are setting the stage for an unexpectedly close contest between Intel and Via's upcoming low-power Isaiah processors
By Sumner Lemon, IDG News Service
January 29, 2008
InfoWorld Intel will offer a detailed look at a new processor next week during a presentation at the International Solid State Circuits Conference (ISSCC) that should set the stage for an unexpectedly close battle with Taiwan's Via Technologies. Intel's presentation will cover technical details of an unnamed low-power processor that is made using a 45-nanometer process and designed for mobile Internet devices, according to an abstract contained in the ISSCC program. That's the same general description used by Intel to describe its upcoming Silverthorne processor.
Intel executives declined to confirm whether the ISSCC presentation covers Silverthorne but said the abstract provided an accurate description of the unspecified processor. If the chip described is indeed Silverthorne, the presentation appears set to confirm many rumored details of the chip's architecture and characteristics.
Most importantly, Silverthorne is rumored to be an in-order processor, the same as the processor Intel will detail next week, according to the abstract.
In layman's terms, this means the chip functions like a factory with a single assembly line and is capable of processing one operation at a time. An in-order processor must complete that operation before it can move on to another operation. This is a different chip architecture from that used in Intel's other processors but it's the same as Via Technologies' low-power C7 chip, which has proved popular among the portable device makers that are Silverthorne's target market....[More] [Comments] |
