Intel launches mobile Core i7 – and previews 32nm shrink

 

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By Darien Graham-Smith in San Francisco

Posted on 23 Sep 2009 at 21:39

Five days after we brought you the first review of a Core i7 laptop, Intel has officially launched its mobile Core i7 processors at IDF in San Francisco. It revealed three models in the new Clarksfield range, all of them quad-core 45nm chips based on the familiar Nehalem architecture.

The processors are designated the Core i7-920XM, the i7-820QM and the i7-720QM. Nominal clock speeds are conservative, at 2GHz, 1.73GHz and 1.6GHz respectively – but Intel’s Turbo Mode can raise frequencies by as much as 1.2GHz when only a single core is in use, while completely shutting down unused areas of the chip.

PC client group vice president Mooly Eden explained that the aim is to minimise power draw during light use (and hence maximise battery life) while still offering high performance when required.

“Turbo Mode looks great in desktops,” he declared, “but much more so in notebooks. It's called a mobile workstation, but it has the power of a server of a few years ago.”

“It’s a kick-ass microprocessor.”

Read Sasha Muller’s impressions of the i7-820QM.

32nm mobile CPUs with Graphics Turbo

No sooner had Clarksfield been revealed than Eden introduced us to its successor, the 32nm Arrandale design due to arrive in 2010. In addition to a die-shrink, Arrandale chips will feature integrated GPUs – though in this generation the graphic functions will reside on a separate 45nm die.

The new chips will retain Turbo Mode for the dynamic clocking of individual cores, but they will also feature a new Graphics Turbo feature. This will enable heavily loaded cores to “borrow” power not only from unused CPU cores, but also from the GPU whenever it isn’t being heavily taxed.