Intel Corporation today unveiled Intel® Core™ Duo and
Intel® Core™ and Extreme processors for consumer and business desktop and
laptop PCs and workstations.
"The Core 2 Duo processors are simply the best processors in the
world," said Paul Otellini, president and CEO of Intel. "Not since
Intel introduced the Pentium® processor has the industry seen the heart of the
computer reinvented like this. The Core 2 Duo desktop processor is an
energy-efficient marvel, packing 291 million transistors yet consuming 40
percent lower power, while delivering the performance needed for the
applications of today and tomorrow."
The Intel Core 2 Duo processors are built using Intel's leading 65-nanometer
silicon process technology. The desktop PC version of the processors also
provide up to a 40 percent increase in performance and are more than 40 percent
more energy efficient versus Intel's previous best processor.
The Intel Core 2 Duo processor family consists of five desktop PC processors
tailored for business, home, and enthusiast users, such as high-end gamers, and
five mobile PC processors designed to fit the needs of a mobile lifestyle. Intel
Core 2 Duo processor-based workstations will also deliver industry leading
performance for such areas as design, content creation and technical computing.
The processor family is based on Intel® Core™ microarchitecture, designed
to provide powerful yet energy-efficient performance. With the power of dual
cores, or computing engines, the processors can manage numerous tasks faster.
They also can operate more smoothly when multiple applications are running, such
as writing e-mails while downloading music or videos and conducting a virus
scan. These dual-core chips also improve tasks, such as viewing and playing
high-definition video, protecting the PC and its assets during e-commerce
transactions, and enabling improved battery life for sleeker, lighter notebooks.
Consumers and businesses will have the option to purchase Intel Core 2 Duo
processors as part of Intel's premier market-focused platforms, which are made
up of Intel hardware and software technologies tailored to specific computing
needs, including Intel® vPro™ technology for businesses, Intel® Centrino®
Duo mobile technology for laptops, and Intel® Viiv™ technology for the home.
Advanced Innovations
Intel Core 2 Duo and Intel® Core™2 Extreme processors include many advanced
innovations, including:
- Intel® Wide Dynamic Execution – Improves performance and efficiency as
each core can complete up to four full instructions simultaneously using an
efficient 14-stage pipeline.
- Intel® Smart Memory Access – Improves system performance by hiding
memory latency, thus optimizing the use of available computer data bandwidth
to provide data to the processor when and where it is needed.
- Intel® Advanced Smart Cache – Includes a shared L2 cache or memory
reservoir to reduce power by minimizing memory "traffic" yet
increases performance by allowing one core to utilize the entire cache when
the other core is idle. Only Intel provides this capability in all segments.
- Intel® Advanced Digital Media Boost – Effectively doubles the execution
speed for instructions used widely in multimedia and graphics applications.
- Intel® 64 Technology – This enhancement to Intel's 32-bit architecture
supports 64-bit computing, including enabling the processor to access larger
amounts of memory.
Mobile PC Processor Unique Features
Intel Core 2 Duo mobile processors include many advanced innovations, including:
- Intel® Dynamic Power Coordination – Coordinates Enhanced Intel
SpeedStep® Technology and idle power-management state (C-states)
transitions independently per core to help save power.
- Intel® Dynamic Bus Parking – Enables platform power savings and
improved battery life by allowing the chipset to power down with the
processor in low-frequency mode.
- Enhanced Intel® Deeper Sleep with Dynamic Cache Sizing – Saves power by
flushing cache data to system memory during periods of inactivity to lower
CPU voltage.