The Tipping Point: 2011 Technology Preview

Posted 12/08/2010 at 12:48pm | by The Maximum PC Staff

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PC Users are on the brink of a massive shift in technology and performance. We identify the most game-changing technologies and life-changing products for the coming year

To the PC doubters and doomsayers throughout the land, we have but one thing to say. You are incorrect. Misguided. Flat-out wrong. As we started to investigate the technologies, products, and processors that will appear in PCs and related devices in the year ahead, we realized that, from this moment on, our beloved Personal Computer is more important and more relevant than ever.

It’s not that the times aren’t changing. They most assuredly are, and the infusion of so many new platforms and usage models into the home and the personal-computing equation is concentrating a lot of power and flexibility in our hands.

Not surprisingly, the PC ethos we all embrace—nonlinear, flexible, interconnected, and constantly evolving—lies at the center of the crossover. We mean that literally and figuratively. Desktops. Laptops. Tablets. Smartphones. Accelerated Processing Units. 60GHz networks. Personal servers. These days, each of us is essentially walking around with a tiny supercomputer, Internet, and cloud-computing scheme in our hands. To which we say, “Bring it on.” We’ve been waiting for this moment for years.

As always, the near future of PC technology is coalescing around three key axes: performance, power, and interconnectivity. Back in the day, you could sacrifice one or maybe even two of these criteria. Not anymore. Over the next 10 pages, we’re going to explain what, why, when, where, and how.

CPUs

2011 will bring a true battle royal for CPU supremacy. Here's an early scouting report

Yeah, we know: Everyone is hyper-excited about netbooks, tablets, smartphones, phablets, and blah blah blah. We couldn’t care less about that noise, because in 2011, we’re going to see an epic battle between AMD’s new CPU, code-named Bulldozer, and Intel’s Sandy Bridge and Sandy Bridge E procs.

We know that Bulldozer will be a significant update for AMD and is considered the company’s first all-out “new” chip since the original Athlon was introduced. The major change is the adoption of a new dual-chip “module” approach. Typical CPU cores are stand-alone affairs, isolated islands. If core 1 is busy on a single-threaded application and core 2 is twiddling its thumbs, core 1 won’t be able to access core 2’s resources. With Bulldozer’s dual-core modules, CPU core resources that aren’t being utilized can be thrown at the single-threaded application core 1 is working on, thereby increasing performance.

We expect to see AMD's all-new Bulldozer CPU early next year. It may be the first processor to offer consumers an octo-core solution. It will also be the first chip to use a new duplex approach to computing.

AMD says its dual-core modules are a way to one-up Intel’s Hyper-Threading, which shares the resources of a core by creating a virtual second core to make it seem like one core is two. In the end, though, it’s still just the resources of one core. If AMD is correct, Bulldozer will give power users the best of both worlds by offering performance greater than a Hyper-Threaded core without the power consumption or heat generation that comes with using two full and distinct cores

We’ll know the true value of Bulldozer early next year when parts are expected to ship. It, as they say, is on.

Sandy Bridge

Despite releasing preliminary details about its next-gen CPU, code-named Sandy Bridge, Intel is still keeping a lot under wraps. What we know for sure is that Sandy Bridge will be built on the same 32nm process used to fabricate today’s hexa-core Core i7 chips. Architecturally, it’s somewhat similar to a current Core i3 and Core i5 chip (code-named Clarkdale) but will integrate graphics under the spreader. The big difference is that where Clarkdale used two adjacent chips connected via QPI, Sandy Bridge actually fuses the graphics core with a compute core. Instead of communicating over an external QPI link, the graphics and compute core talk at the cache level.

Sandy Bridge also brings new vector extensions (known as AVX) and an improved Turbo Boost mode. AVX will offer significant performance boosts when used, but the functionality will only be exposed on operating systems running SP1 of Windows 7 (due in early 2011) and new Linux distributions. We know for sure that the new Turbo Boost will push CPUs far harder than previous iterations did. Previously, processors would not clock up if all of the cores were under load. With this new Turbo Boost, Sandy Bridge chips are capable of running overclocked even when all cores are loaded up. It’s only when a chip approaches overheating that the Turbo Boost will fall back.

Sandy Bridge is based on Intel's existing 32nm process, but is the "tock" in the company's tick-tock design cadence, meaning it should offer significantly enhaced benefits over today's CPUs.

Sandy Bridge chips will continue to feature a dual-channel DDR3 memory controller and 16 lanes of x16 PCI-E onboard. Like existing Lynnfield and Clarkdale chips, Sandy Bridge parts will come in dual and quad configurations, with the high-performance tier receiving Hyper-Threading capability.

We expect Sandy Bridge’s graphics performance to run several magnitudes faster than existing Core i3 and Core i5 chips and, like the compute cores, the graphics core will also support Turbo Boost and will be able to clock up when under load. So, what isn’t official yet? Clock speeds, cache sizes, and prices remain unannounced, but we expect them to fit into the same categories as existing Core i3/i5/i7 chips.

E for Enthusiast

Unfortunately, we won’t see a Sandy Bridge E (for Enthusiast) CPU until later in 2011, but at least it’s shaping up to be a doozy. Paralleling today’s LGA1366 chips, the Sandy Bridge E series will come in quad- and hexa-core configurations, and we’ve heard enough speculation about an eight-core version to start believing it’s really going to happen.
 
Like the mainstream Sandy Bridge chip, it will include AVX and an enhanced Turbo Boost mode. Since it is a Xeon cutout, there is talk of the new part having a quad-channel memory controller but Intel has neither confirmed nor denied these reports. Also unconfirmed, but expected, is native PCI-E 3.0 in the new Patsburg chipset. This enthusiast-class chip won’t be introduced until the second half of the year, but it will, of course, require a new socket.

Sandy Bridge eliminates the multichip package of today's core i3 and will essentially "fuse" a CPU with a GPU.