Sandy Bridge

[JJ 3000]

She's finally here. At last, Intel is taking the wraps off of one of the most anticipated bits of silicon we've seen in years: Sandy Bridge.

At the heart of Sandy Bridge is an essentially new processor microarchitecture, the most sweeping architectural transition from Intel since the introduction of the star-crossed Pentium 4. Nearly everything has changed, from the branch predictors through the out-of-order execution engine and into the memory subsystem.

Beyond its potent new cores, Sandy Bridge incorporates more of a PC's basic functions on a single square of silicon than any prior CPU in its class. Not only does it have the memory controller and PCIe links (in addition to two to four CPU cores), but it also brings a graphics processor onboard.

Excellent 19 page article

Another in-depth article

[Salmon Trout]

I hope the CPU architecture is better than the writing quality of that extract. The "star-crossed" Pentium 4?  "potent" cores?  Having looked at the article, I see that the author doesn't know the difference between mathematics and arithmetic (Hint: people do mathematics, FPUs do arithmetic).