Intel quad-core Sandy Bridge taped out

Canard PC has published some new information about Intel's upcoming 32nm Sandy Bridge architecture. This new CPU is expected in Q1 2011 and according to the site the A0 stepping was taped out in the 23rd week of this year. The site reveals the mainstream quad-core Sandy Bridge chip will have four cores with 256KB L2 cache and initial estimates for clock speeds range from 2.8GHz to 3.4GHz, with a Turbo mode that should take one core to clock speeds of 3.8GHz to 4GHz. Sandy Bridge will have a 32nm integrated graphics core (1.0GHz to 1.4GHz) that is connected to the L3 cache, integrated dual-channel DDR3-1600 memory controller and the Sandy Bridge System Agent (Northbridge) that offers PCIe 2.0, DMI and PCU. It also features HyperTreading, AVX Ext instruction set, 256-bit vectors, 4 operands, AEX instructions, unrestricted VMX, shared 8MB L3 cache.

According to the site, the new integrated graphics core of Intel's Sandy Bridge should be able to compete with 2011 entry-level graphics cards from ATI and NVIDIA, although that seems quite optimistic. The quad-core Sandy Bridge has a 85W TDP and measures around 225mm², with each core occupying around 20mm². Dual-core and eight-core Sandy Bridge processors will also be available, but details about those chips aren't available yet.

While we can not reveal to you some details of the architecture in the heart of Sandy Bridge, a few remain unknown. First, the Socket. According to the noises heard in corridors at a manufacturer of motherboard, the CPU should resume Socket 1156 of Clarkdale (generation "Westmere" above) but require a new chipset. Then, the performance of the integrated circuit graphics are all subject to speculation. We already know that the IGP Sandy Bridge will always be based on GMA and not on any variation of Larabee. With a frequency of approximately 1.2 GHz, this heart intended to be compatible with DirectX 11, should not be ridiculous but be a lightning war. Finally, the number of PCI Express link is still unknown. According to the first draft of the datasheet, this heart contain 20 lines PCI Express 2.0 (16x + 4x), but the information could not be confirmed ...