Want to know Intel and AMD's release plans for this year and next? We have the roadmap details for desktop and mobile processors.

The multicore era is upon us
Megahertz will take you only so far. Desktop processors topped the 1GHz mark in 2000, 2GHz in 2001, and 3GHz in 2002. Six years later, we've yet to see a chip leave the factory clocked at 4GHz. Power demands and heat concerns meant that AMD and Intel couldn't simply keep ramping up clock speeds with each new CPU generation without running into design obstacles with desktops and especially with laptops.

Having come to the end of the megahertz rope, Intel and AMD looked to other methods for increasing processing power while maintaining or improving efficiency, the most significant of which was increasing the number of processing cores on a CPU. The multicore era began in spring 2005 with Intel's Pentium D 800 dual-core chips, and AMD soon followed with the Athlon 64 X2 chips. AMD dominated the initial round of head-to-head benchmarks, and Intel's subsequent Pentium D 900 series, released in the autumn of 2005, did little to dampen the enthusiasm for AMD's X2 line.

AMD's run was short-lived as Intel sped back into the lead in 2006. Intel released the first dual-core mobile chip with Core Duo in January of that year, which brought about huge advances in notebook performance. Following that success, its Core 2 Duo launch in the summer of 2006 — for both desktops (Conroe) and notebooks (Merom) — can arguably be called the most successful product launch in the company's history. AMD is still reeling. Its Phenom chips have done nothing to change the situation as Intel continues to lead the microprocessor field with its Penryn-class CPUs.

Will AMD find a way to combat the runaway hit that is Core 2 Duo? What advances does Intel have in store later this year and next? How will each company expand on its multicore technology? We'll answer these questions and more as we explore Intel's and AMD's roadmaps — both the officially announced technologies just around the corner and the rumours of those further down the line.

Roadmaps

Intel and AMD's roadmap plans

H1 2008

H1 2008

Four on the floor
At the end of 2007, AMD finally debuted its Phenom quad-core desktop processor. An error in the design of the higher-end models kept the release limited to two lower-end chips, although AMD has since fixed the problem and just launched a revitalised line of Phenoms.

We found the first batch of Phenom chips, the 9500 and 9600, underpowered compared with Intel's quad-core lineup, but as we hoped would happen, AMD dropped the Phenom prices low enough to make the Phenom a solid price-performance option. You can now find Phenom chips in PCs that cost less than $700 (~£350). A comparable system with an Intel quad-core chip will cost between $800 and $1,000 (£400-£500). Newer Phenom X4 9850 and X4 9750 chips just released still can't catch up to Intel's older Core 2 Quad Q6600 chip, but if their prices fall like those of the other Phenoms, you might find AMD quad-core chips in a wide range of affordable desktops very soon.

News also hit in February of this year that AMD has shipped its long-rumoured triple-core Phenom X3 processors to system builders, although HP and Dell are selling them only in their business desktops.

For Intel's part, the end of 2007 saw the debut of Intel's 45-nanometer chip technology in the form of the quad-core Core 2 Extreme QX9650, which set records on our benchmarks. Fast-forward to January 2008 and the same underlying chip design has trickled down to the mainstream dual-core Core 2 Duo 8000 series and the quad-core Core 2 Quad E9000 CPUs. Intel has not been as aggressive as AMD in getting its new quad-core chips in mainstream PCs, we suspect because it's happy to let its Core 2 Duo chips continue to do the heavy lifting. Intel has also bolstered its high-end with the Core 2 Extreme QX9770 and QX9775, which are faster versions of the QX9650, and also designed to work with a 1,600MHz frontside bus (compared to the QX9650's 1,333MHz bus design).

Despite all of those chip introductions, Intel has been relatively quiet on the motherboard side of things, at least on the lower end. All of the new 45nm CPUs have the same socket design that Intel has used for the past few years, and thus, Intel's current P30 and G30-series chipsets can handle the Core 2 Duo E8000 and Core 2 Quad Q9000 chips with no trouble.

On the high end, Intel has made some interesting moves. The X38 and X48 chipsets work with the new Extreme chips, with both supporting DDR3 memory, ATI's CrossFire dual graphics card technology, and — in the case of the X48 — faster 1,600MHz bus. Intel also debuted the D5400XS motherboard, also known as Skulltrail. This crossover from Intel's server chipsets supports two quad-core CPUs, as well as both CrossFire and Nvidia's SLI technology. Although Intel pitched the Skulltrail as a platform for both playing and designing games, such an expensive rig would offer little benefit to PC gamers, because very few games can even take advantage of four CPU cores right now, let alone eight.

Mobile platform advances
With the release of the new Puma platform — still planned for the first half of 2008 — AMD will bring out a brand new 65nm mobile processor design, this one code-named Griffin. A key advancement with this CPU family will be the introduction of split power planes for granular power management. Each processor core will have its own power plane, with a third plane beneath the integrated memory controller and HyperTransport link. This design lets Puma chipsets control each plane independently, distributing and conserving power based on workload. AMD promises further power savings with 'link power management', which applies the same dynamic scaling to HyperTransport link speeds. Puma's chipset, the AMD RS780M, will feature motherboard DirectX 10 graphics processing and multi-monitor support. The platform will accommodate 802.11a/b/g/n as well as 3G wireless options. Finally, Puma will incorporate a hybrid-graphics solution, called Power Xpress, that promises to extend battery life by automatically switching from discrete to integrated graphics when the system is unplugged.

In addition to better power management, the chip-to-chip connections in Puma will meet the HyperTransport 3.0 standard, which could result in higher clock speeds and theoretically more efficient use of memory. Other technology updates on the platform include support for the final 802.11n specification and for DirectX 10, as well as the company's Universal Video Decoder technology, which provides dedicated video processing on the chipset.

Intel started off 2008 by introducing mobile versions of Penryn, its 45nm chip. Essentially a shrink of Core 2 Duo chips, Penryn includes a few enhancements; one such upgrade, SSE 4.0 instructions, will (according to Intel) improve the performance of multimedia applications. Another improvement will stem from Intel's switch to new materials for transistors, which should result in lower power consumption. Early 2008 also saw the introduction of the small-form-factor Core 2 Duo CPUs that made possible the latest wave of ultrathin ultraportables, such as the MacBook Air and the Lenovo ThinkPad X300.

Following the company's tick-tock pattern of releasing a new chip, then a new platform, Intel has also lined up a refresh of its Centrino platform, until recently code-named Montevina but now officially called Centrino 2. Key elements of the new platform will be Penryn processors — some with a 1,066MHz front-side bus — and such graphics improvements as broader DirectX 10 and Blu-ray support. (Word has it that the new integrated graphics processor will be called X4500 HD.) Centrino 2 will definitely include an optional integrated WiMax radio, and the rumour mill suggests that Intel will boost the amount of available Turbo Memory to 2GB, to take better advantage of Windows Vista.

In the first half of this year Intel will also release a whole new processor family, dubbed Atom. The new processors are designed for Mobile Internet Devices (MIDs) and portable computers with 7- to 10in. screens ('netbooks', in Intel's parlance). Because the focus is on portability, Atom processors are smaller and reportedly more energy-efficient than the company's mainstream mobile CPUs. Performance-wise, the new chips seem best for lightweight mobile applications; the earliest testers are reporting that Atom's performance trails that of Celeron.

H2 2008

H2 2008

Say hello to Nehalem
Where Penryn was Intel's move to increased power efficiency, Nehalem, which is set to debut in the latter half of 2008, will introduce a brand new CPU architecture. This pattern of shrinking the die one year, then revamping the core architecture the next is how Intel chip development will proceed, at least under its currently stated release plan. For example, 2009 will feature supposedly more power-efficient, 32nm process Nehalem-equivalent chips (code-named Westmere), while 2010 will feature a new chip architecture design, code-named Sandy Bridge (formerly Gesher), and so on.

Intel's 'tick-tock' cadence model
Intel has settled on an alternating schedule of shrinking the size of its chips with one release ('tick') while revamping the chips' architecture with the next release ('tock'). A tick-tock cycle will occur every two years (see table, below).

For Nehalem, the big innovation will involve Intel linking the CPU to other components on the board via a new technology now branded QuickPath (formerly Common System Interface), a next-generation interconnect technology designed to compete with AMD's HyperTransport. Although AMD's 65nm Phenom has not fared as well against Intel's new 45nm Core 2 Duo chips, when the two were on the same die-size during the old Athlon/Pentium D days, AMD's built-in memory controller design was a significant factor in the Athlon's speed advantage. By introducing a similar design with Nehalem, Intel may further distance itself from AMD with its faster 45nm designs.

AMD's projections for the latter half of year include the very important move to the 45nm manufacturing process. We have a feeling we'll see at least a 45nm Opteron before the end of 2008, if not a full-fledged 45nm, HyperTransport 3.0-based Phenom desktop chip. We were also supposed to have AMD's new Socket AM3 motherboard chipsets by the beginning of 2008. This new circuitry will let AMD-based PCs use DDR3 memory, among other features. We've seen projections saying AM3 will be out by the end of this year, and others placing it in 2009. Moving to DDR3 isn't quite urgent enough yet for us to start feeling impatient, but by the end of this year it will likely be a requirement of any serious PC enthusiast. Hopefully AMD will have some concrete info on its next-generation motherboard chipsets, if not a full-fledged product launch, by the end of this year.

Intel's 'tick-tock' development model

 
* formerly Gesher

2009 and beyond

2009 and beyond

Looking at laptops
AMD's acquisition of graphics chipmaker ATI should bear some major collaborative fruit on the notebook side in early 2009, when the company is expected to debut its newest mobile platform, code-named Shrike. The platform's centrepiece is a unified CPU, GPU and chipset that form one 'accelerated processing unit' (APU). AMD anticipates that Shrike will provide a better graphics and media experience and (because only one chip is drawing power) extended battery life for notebook users. A (PDF) presentation delivered to analysts in late 2007 also notes that Shrike will support ultra-wideband (UWB) for high-bandwidth data transfer.

Intel is characteristically quiet on its mobile plans for 2009, but it's safe to assume that the first half of the year will bring new mobile processors built on the Nehalem microarchitecture. At least one site claims that Nehalem mobile CPUs will come in two flavours: a quad-core version (code-named Clarksfield) and a dual-core version (code-named Auburnsdale) that incorporates an on-die GPU.

Given the company's release pattern, we expect the new mobile chip to be followed within a few months by a new mobile platform. The sixth generation of Centrino is code-named Calpella and will reportedly take full advantage of Intel's QuickPath interconnect technology, although few other details are known at this time.

Peering at PCs
On the desktop side, AMD has more than just multicore ambitions in 2009. We expect that its line of 45nm desktop chips will expand to include two, three, four, and as many as eight cores. It also has a design in the works, code-named Bulldozer, which will allow up to 16 cores slated for 2010. By this point, we expect quad-core chips will closing in on ubiquity in budget and mainstream CPUs, with dual-core bringing up the rear on only the bottom-end of the desktop market. If AMD or Intel does come out with a native eight-core chip, expect to see them debut on servers, and then on enthusiast systems.

Core density is not the only change on AMD's horizon, however. By the end of 2009 we expect to see the first iterations of the comopany's Fusion design, which will incorporate the graphics processing core directly into the same silicon as the CPU itself. We do not expect this change will bring about the end of the graphics card market as it exists today. But as the only vendor able to tap into the knowledge of design teams seasoned in both CPU and performance GPU design (and no, we don't count Intel's integrated graphics chip as a 'performance' part), AMD's Fusion core may be unique in its ability to provide powerful graphics and general processing power in a newly efficient package.

Intel's plans for 2009 involve extending and shrinking its Nehalem design, as well as extending its reach into your PC overall. 2009 is a 'tick' year, which means that Intel will shrink the 45nm Nehalem core down to a 32nm manufacturing process, the result of which is code-named Westmere. Before that happens, though, Intel has said that it may ship an eight core-native version of Nehalem in early 2009, and it will probably be the first consumer desktop chip vendor to offer such a CPU.

This slide from an Nvidia presentation shows the apparent benefit of upgrading to a second Nvidia graphics card, as compared with upgrading to a faster Intel quad-core processor.

And while this article is supposed to be about CPUs, we'd be remiss if we didn't mention Intel's Larrabee graphics card plans. Rather than an integrated chip design, Larrabee is the code-name of a discrete graphics card set to debut in late 2009. That's right — Intel plans to get back in the 3D card game. This is not the melding of the CPU and the GPU that AMD has in mind for its Fusion (although it's certainly possible that Intel could go that route), but rather it's a shot at Nvidia, whose CUDA design has brought a new level of programmability to high-end 3D cards meant for professional 3D imaging. Because that programmability essentially off-loads CPU cycles to the 3D card, if your Nvidia-made 3D card is doing a lot of that work, you might not need to spend as much on that fast Intel processor. And as depicted in the screenshot above, this fight over who gets to do your processing work has already begun.

Desktops today

How we got here: where we stand today

Desktop CPU recap
The dual-core PC era began in April 2005 when Intel released the Pentium Extreme Edition 840 processor, a 90nm chip running at 3.2GHz. Following this pricey Extreme Edition chip was 'dual-core for the mainstream' in the form of the Pentium D 800 series. Intel's second-generation dual-core chips, the Pentium D 900 series, were released in early 2006 and saw the company move to the 65nm process. During this time, AMD was getting rave reviews with its dual-core, 90nm Athlon 64 X2 line, thanks in large part to its integrated memory controller. While Intel's chips still needed to shuttle data via the slower front-side bus to communicate with system memory, AMD's chips featured a memory controller on the die that operated at the same frequency as the processor itself.

It wasn't until Intel introduced its Core technology in July 2006 that we were able to fully grasp the benefits of dual-core processing. The architecture behind Core 2 Duo chips not only brought about leaps in performance but also improved efficiency. Although they didn't introduce an on-die memory controller, the chips did introduce a host of architectural improvements, the most significant being a unified cache structure. Instead of a separate allotment of Level 2 cache dedicated to each of the two cores as was the case with Intel's previous dual-core chips and AMD's Athlon 64 X2 CPUs, Core 2 Duo chips had one large pool to pull from, which provides greater flexibility in allowing each core to access more cache as needed.

The advantages of multicore processing can be seen when multitasking or running a multithreaded application. While some multithreaded apps such as Photoshop and iTunes are available, there are certainly more programs that will be released in the near future that will be designed to run on multicore processors. Vista was built to run on multicore processors, for example, while XP was primarily a single-threaded operating system.

The way CPUs will continue to advance won't be with increased clock speed, but with more cores. Intel released a quad-core chip, the Core 2 Extreme QX6700, in November 2006 and then came out with a mainstream equivalent, the Core 2 Quad Q6600, at CES in January 2007. AMD answered with the Quad FX. As we have moved along in the multicore era, AMD and Intel have each introduced new quad-core processors, Intel with its Core 2 Extreme and Core 2 Quad lines and AMD with its Phenom series. As our recent CPU reviews show, Intel still enjoys a considerable performance edge.

Intel and AMD each continue to manufacture single-core processors for budget PCs. You'll still find low-end systems featuring Intel's Pentium 4 and Celeron D chips alongside those with AMD's Athlon 64 and Sempron parts inside.

Current desktop CPUs

Intel and AMD's current desktop CPUs

Notebooks today

Notebook CPU recap
Intel's current practice of marketing a whole mobile platform under a single name began in early 2003 with the introduction of Centrino. The platform designated a specific combination of Intel-manufactured processor, wireless card and integrated graphics that the company claimed was optimised for better performance and battery life. Released to coincide with the Centrino launch, the first Pentium M processor (code-named Banias) signalled Intel's commitment to manufacturing CPUs specifically for use in notebooks, with features designed to lower both heat output and power consumption. From its inception and through a refresh in 2005 with the 90nm Dothan chip, the Centrino platform incorporated a Pentium M processor, an Intel Mobile Express chipset and Intel PRO/Wireless Wi-Fi card.

The third generation of Centrino, code-named Napa, was inaugurated in early 2006 with the release of the first mobile Core processors (code-named Yonah). As the official name implied, Core Duo processors (released in January) provided the first mobile dual-core experience, while the Core Solo (released in April) used the same dual-core die, but with only one active core. The new Centrino platform included a Core processor, Intel Mobile 945 Express chipset and Intel PRO/Wireless 3945ABG Wi-Fi; the platform name 'Centrino Duo' refers to a Centrino system with a Core Duo processor. Late summer 2006 saw the launch of the Core 2 Duo (Merom) processor for the Centrino platform.

The most recent update to the Centrino platform came in May 2007. Intel announced the new Centrino Duo and Centrino Pro mobile platforms, both code-named Santa Rosa. The platforms include the next generation of Core 2 Duo processors and a new chipset, code-named Crestline, which includes an 800MHz frontside bus. (It's worth noting that 800MHz RAM, which would take advantage of the faster FSB, has yet to be widely offered in notebooks.) Other elements of Santa Rosa include the Kedron 802.11n wireless card and — on the Centrino Pro variation — Intel Turbo Memory, which is flash memory on the motherboard that's designed to speed boot and application-launch times. However, our anecdotal tests have yet to reveal any added speed in notebooks incorporating this technology.

On the processor side, Intel kept things moving along by releasing the first mobile Core 2 Extreme processors in summer 2007. These gaming-oriented CPUs are notable in that their overspeed protection has been disabled. More recently, we've seen the latest generation of Core 2 Duo processors, code-named Penryn, trickle into notebook lines. Penryn represents the first mobile processor manufactured using Intel's 45nm process; though initial testing hasn't shown any far-reaching performance improvements, Penryn will be a key element of the Centrino 2 platform (code-named Montevina) that's set for release in the second quarter of 2008.

Concurrent to these developments, Intel has maintained the Celeron M line of budget processors. Celerons are built on the same architecture as the current generation of high-end CPUs (for example, Pentium M or Core) but generally feature half the L2 cache and lack some of the newest power and processing management technologies. In addition, Intel developed the Pentium Dual-Core at the request of notebook manufacturers. This budget dual-core processor has a smaller shared L2 cache and fewer power management features than Core 2 Duo. Neither Pentium Dual-Core nor Celeron processors are considered part of the Centrino platform.

A survey of the Intel-based notebook market today would reveal Celeron, Core Solo, Core 2 Solo, Core Duo, Core 2 Duo and Core 2 Extreme processors, along with a handful of low-cost Pentium Dual-Core systems.

AMD, meanwhile, started designing processors specifically for the mobile market (and not just adapting desktop processors for notebooks) in 2005. March of that year saw the release of Turion 64, which featured support for 64-bit computing and new power management features. The company released its first dual-core mobile processor, the Turion 64 X2, in May 2006. In 2007, AMD also released a low-power version of its Athlon 64 X2 desktop processor that can be found in a number of low-cost notebooks. AMD has continued to manufacture its Mobile Sempron line for the budget market; unlike its higher-end siblings, Mobile Sempron does not incorporate AMD's HyperTransport technology.

Historically, AMD hasn't manufactured graphics cards or wireless solutions, so the company's mobile platform is based on what its marketing department calls an 'open ecosystem'. AMD ensures its processors and chipsets work with all the major third-party graphics and wireless solutions so notebook manufacturers can choose each element individually. That pattern is set to change, at least a little, now that AMD has acquired graphics chipmaker ATI; although the company outwardly remains committed to providing an open platform, we expect to see tighter integration between AMD processors and ATI graphics cards in the future.

A survey of the notebook market today would reveal Mobile Sempron, Athlon 64 X2 and Turion 64 X2 systems.

Current notebook CPUs

Intel and AMD's current notebook CPUs

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