45nm Cell processor uses 40% less power

Information provided through the ISSCC 2008 program are brief, but the document - which was posted earlier this month on the ISSCC website – offers some insight what we can expect to learn this year. Sony is apparently working on a 65 nm to 45 nm migration of its Cell Broadband Engine. Sony claims that the chip area size will be reduced by 34% and the 45 nm Cell will consume 40% less power than the 65 nm generation. The company also works on improving the design for manufacturability (DFM) for Cell to simplify the CPU production process.

Intel remains one of the major contributors to the conference and has submitted a total of 16 papers. We hear that there will be an update on the company’s Terascale effort, even if there is no dedicated session mentioned in the ISSCC program. Instead, it appears that Intel will have two major focus areas: The upcoming Tukwila Itanium processor and Silverthorne, which will be heading towards entry-level systems as well as Mobile Internet Devices (MIDs).

The ISSCC document describes Tukwila as a two-billion transistor 65 nm quad-core processor with a die size of 699 mm2. The CPU integrates 30 MB of L2 cache and 96 GB/s processor-to-processor bandwidth through the firm’s new “QuickPath” Interconnect. The peak memory bandwidth of Tukwila is 34 GB/s. Intel says Tukwila has three times the circuitry of the current Itanium generation with Montvale core.