Yorkfield Extreme Edition based on the 45nm Penry core architecture will meetheads-on with AMD Altair based on the 65nm K8L core in Q3 2007. Both are quadcore offerings but AMD touted theirs to be a native quad-core with dedicated512KB L2 cache for each core and an additional 2MB L3 cache for the 4 cores toshare. Intel has different plans for Yorkfield. Instead of sharing L2 cache forall the cores, the L2 cache size is further increased. Due to its advanced 45nmprocess technology, Yorkfield XE is able to pack a total of 12MB L2 cache (2 x6MB L2) and still achieving a much smaller die size. The clock speed issignificantly higher at 3.46-3.74GHz too.
Yorkfield will feature Penryn New Instructions (PNI) or more officially knownas SSE4 with 50 more new instructions. Yorkfield XE will pair up nicely with theBearlake-X chipset supporting DDR3 1333, PCI Express 2.0 and ICH9x coming in theQ3 '07 timeframe as well. It is hard to predict which architecture will wineventually but it seems like AMD has packed more innovations into their K8Larchitecture while Intel moving onto 45nm process benefits its Yorkfield greatlyin terms of lower power consumption, higher clock speed and a much bigger L2cache. Certainly it is exciting ahead of us.
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