Intel Introduces Silvermont Micro-Architecture for Next-Gen Atom

From X-bit Labs: Intel Corp. today took the wraps off its brand new, low-power, high-performance microarchitecture named Silvermont. Silvermont microarchitecture delivers ~3x more peak performance or the same performance at ~5x lower power over current-generation Intel Atom processor core. Silvermont will be the foundation for a breadth of 22nm products targeted at tablets, smartphones, micros-ervers, network infrastructure, storage and other market segments.

"Silvermont is a leap forward and an entirely new technology foundation for the future that will address a broad range of products and market segments. Early sampling of our 22nm SoCs, including "Bay Trail" and "Avoton" is already garnering positive feedback from our customers. Going forward, we will accelerate future generations of this low-power microarchitecture on a yearly cadence," said Dadi Perlmutter, Intel executive vice president and chief product officer.

Silvermont will serve as the foundation for a breadth of 22nm products expected in market later this year. The performance-per-watt improvements with the new microarchitecture will enable a significant difference in performance and responsiveness for the compute devices built around these products. Intel's Silvermont microarchitecture was designed and co-optimized with Intel's 22nm SoC process with tri-gate transistors. By taking advantage of this industry-leading technology, Intel is able to provide a significant performance increase and improved energy efficiency.

Highlights of the Silvermont microarchitecture include:

- A new out-of-order execution engine enables best-in-class, single-threaded performance.
- A new multi-core and system fabric architecture scalable up to eight cores and enabling greater performance for higher bandwidth, lower latency and more efficient out-of-order support for a more balanced and responsive system.
- New IA instructions and technologies bringing enhanced performance, virtualization and security management capabilities to support a wide range of products. These instructions build on Intel's existing support for 64-bit and the breadth of the IA software installed base.
- Enhanced power management capabilities including a new intelligent burst technology, low- power C states and a wider dynamic range of operation taking advantage of Intel's 3D transistors. Intel Burst technology 2.0 support for single- and multi-core offers great responsiveness scaled for power efficiency.

View: Article @ Source Site