Intel Santa Rosa - new processor

By David Fearon

Posted on 8 May 2007 at 17:37

Intel Santa Rosa - new processor

The new mobile versions of the Core 2 Duo processor receive a comprehensive set of tweaks.

Most novel is Intel Dynamic Acceleration. This is a workaround to get maximum performance for the large number of single-threaded applications still around that don't benefit from dual cores. Games are among the primary guilty parties here and, with Intel's general attempt to court more gamers and enthusiasts (see p14 for more ), it's a canny move.

Dynamic Acceleration technology works by detecting when one core is largely idle and the other is at 100 per cent utilisation. In this situation, it can stop the clock of one core, while boosting the speed of the other above its nominal speed rating.

Ordinarily, overclocking a mobile processor is taboo, since the extra power consumption will breach the thermal design of a chassis, leading to overheating problems. But with one core stopped - and thus consuming almost no power - the other's clock frequency can be increased while still keeping the total power consumption within the chip's 35W TDP (thermal design power) envelope.

Concrete details of the extent of the IDA speed increase haven't been confirmed, but an Intel spokesperson told us that, essentially, the processor moves up to the next speed bin rating, so a 2.4GHz T7500 will temporarily clock itself up to 2.6GHz.

There are six new processor models. The four standard T-series offerings range from 1.8GHz to 2.6GHz, with either 2MB for the lowest-end T7100 or 4MB of Level 2 cache for the rest of the range; the maximum 4MB of Level 2 cache complement is unchanged from the previous mobile Core 2 generation. There are also two lower-power LV (low-voltage) offerings at 1.4GHz and 1.6GHz, plus some as-yet unconfirmed ULV (ultra-low voltage) variants. See the table below for more details.

The final major improvement is an increase in FSB (front side bus) speed, which rises from 667MHz to 800MHz. Maximum memory speed via the chipset is still limited to 667MHz, however, so the overall speed increase won't be as high as a uniform boost.