Intel’s second generation core CPUs – The Sandy Bridge

Intel has released their second generation core CPUs, “Sandy Bridge”.‎
Sandy Bridge refers to the second stage of adoption of the 32nm technology introduced ‎last year in Clarkdale and Arrandale processors, with a view to increase performance ‎while decreasing power usage and heat.

A combination of re-engineered micro-operation ‎processing, alterations in the memory cluster, and fresh approaches in branch prediction, ‎combined with efforts to prevent overlapping of work have been carried out to achieve ‎these ends. The memory, PCI Express (PCIe), and video controllers have all been ‎relocated in one unified area for the first time, for achieving better communication with ‎each other and all other processing cores, at enhanced speeds and efficiency, by means of ‎a ring-based interconnect.‎

The interconnection has been achieved through four fully pipelined rings, to enable ‎scaling up as the number of cores and cache size increase. As a result, systems based on ‎the technology—from budget laptops to high-end servers—stand to benefit. As an ‎afterthought, a new System Agent has been completely integrated with the ring, to ‎provide power and thermal management services for the PCIe and DDR controllers. The ‎video and media processing systems also operate at higher bandwidths at a lower latency. ‎‎(The new System Agent replaces the earlier ‘uncore.’)‎

Sandy Bridge has redesigned video and media subsystems that increase performance in ‎everyday computing and suited for more specialized tasks like video editing and trans-‎coding, with built-in support for a variety of popular video codecs, as well as accelerators ‎for normally used filters for scaling and removing noise, simultaneously saving enough ‎power and increasing battery life on laptops.‎
Turbo Boost increases the performance of certain cores by turning off others that aren’t ‎being used. In Sandy Bridge, cores are used to boost the target speed for 25 seconds at a ‎time, which is then dropped down gradually to safer limits.‎

However, Sandy Bridge CPUs are not compatible with the LGA1156 sockets used in the ‎Westmere and Clarkdale chips. They require new motherboards with Intel’s new ‎LGA1155 socket. The changes made to Sandy Bridge processors in terms of reducing ‎heat output mean that desktop systems require a smaller fan and heat sink. ‎
Processors and motherboards based on the Sandy Bridge design are now available.‎