Intel is releasing the world's first 22nm product, the Ivy Bridge series which claims to deliver 20% more processor performance, using a 20% less average power. The initial release includes 13 quad-core CPUs, mainly targeted at the desktop market, with dual-core CPUs expected to be announced later in the spring. To help meet the predicted demand, the firm has already built three factories to fabricate the new chips with 50% more supply than early in the Sandy Bridge generation. They expect to have a fourth factory in production later in the year.
The Ivy Bridge CPUs use a new transistor technology, which Intel call "3D transistors". They have been in development for 11 years and aim to challenge Arm's reputation for energy efficiency. As transistors continue to shrink in size, it was coming to the point where they would become unreliable if shrunk much further. Intel's tri-gate transistors have the advantage of reducing current leakage to near-zero while still achieving switching times of 100 billion times per second and only a 2% to 3% additional cost to chip production.
The main performance gain of the Ivy Bridge will be with the integrated GPU, which will be substantially quicker than with the Sandy Bridge series. The GPU will be able to handle the next generation 4K video resolution as well as provide faster transcoding rates, such as re-encoding video to e-mail or transfer to a Smartphone. The 3570 and 3770 models feature HD4000 graphics, which Intel claims will offer double the graphics performance compared to Sandy Bridge's HD3000 graphics. These will also include Microsoft DirectX 11 support.
The chips will also get additional hardware-based security features. The new Intel Z77 chipset to support Ivy Bridge and also Sandby Bridge CPUs will feature native USB 3.0 support, which will make it cheaper for motherboard manufacturers to offer USB3.0 and should mean that once Ivy Bridge is available for laptops and portable computers, they will likely have USB3.0 as standard.
According to Wikipedia, the upper-end desktop model will be a Core i7 3770K, with a 3.5GHz normal clock, 3.9GHz Turbo, 8MB cache, 95W TDP and a suggested retail price of $313. The upper-end Core i5 model is a 3570K, with a 3.4GHz normal clock, 3.8GHz Turbo, 6MB cache, 77W TDP and a suggested retail price of $212. Both feature a 640MHz normal GPU clock rate, with a 1150MHz turbo GPU clock rate.
The BBC News gives some technical info on how the "3D" tri-gate transistor works.
