Intel's Next-Generation Sandy Bridge Microarchitecture Revealed

 At this week's Intel Developer Forum in San Francisco, Intel wasted no time revealing the most anticipated technology of the three-day conference: its second-generation Core microarchitecture, code-named Sandy Bridge. It's due for both desktop and laptop release at the first part of next year, but has been generating buzz for months as tantalizing little details have slowly leaked out. When it came to Sandy Bridge, we wanted to know two things: What exactly was it, and was it worth all the hype? The first question has been definitively answered—and we think we've got a good start on the second.


At its most basic, Sandy Bridge is the latest "tock" in Intel's tick-tock development strategy: the latest iteration of the Westmere-based, 32nm die-shrink of the Nehalem microarchitecture that Intel released at the beginning of the year. They won't fit the LGA1156 socket those chips use, however—they'll need a new one, LGA1155, which will be released on motherboards using the new Series 6 chipset at the same time Sandy Bridge CPUs are released.

But beyond all that, Sandy Bridge is really about unity. Yes, it finally brings the memory controller, PCI Express (PCIe) controller, and video functions within the processor die, which by itself is an enormous change that has major performance repercussions. But it also strikes up a much clearer parity with the modern computing world: finding new ways, for example, to take advantage of large numbers of processing cores (necessary, as Intel released the first consumer-oriented six-core processor earlier this year), and use less power to do everything.

Most users won't notice these changes, but many of them are substantial ones that could be setting the ground for even more exciting developments to come. Read on for our look at what's going on in Sandy Bridge, and what benefits it may hold for computer users and builders starting in 2011.