Gigahertz Makes a Comeback as Intel Rolls Out 45 nm CPUs

Within the next 45 days, Intel's first 45 nm processors for both servers and desktops will be available in quantity, the company announced this morning. Along with them comes the return of what many enthusiasts and system builders consider an old friend: clock speed.

Vastly smaller transistors made possible by Intel's truly legitimate breakthrough high-k-plus-metal-gate manufacturing process - previously known as HK+MG, but referred to today by Intel as simply Hi-K - are paying off considerably. At the time the development was first announced, Intel told BetaNews that one of the payoffs of smaller transistors will be reduced heat and power leakage, which would translate into greater clock speeds. This at a time when Intel's chief competitor, AMD, had been telling customers that "gigahertz is dead;" and just after Intel itself had published white papers pronouncing "the gigahertz myth."

Intel is following up today with no fewer than 16 different Penryn processors, including a quad-core Xeon clocked at 3.2 GHz and a dual-core at 3.4 GHz. On the desktop, the next Core 2 Extreme model QX9650 will take over the high-end of its product line, bumping down the 65 nm QX6850 at the $999 price point (in 1000-unit quantities). The company's complete price list has yet to be updated.

But perhaps the news that's just as big as the arrival of the first 45 nm generation - news which may still take a few weeks to germinate - will be how far down the current Core 2 desktop processor generation will come down in price. Already, its midrange 65 nm processors are competitive with AMD, whose 65 nm generation is still its high end, though Intel's top-of-the-line carries a certain value premium. Now that premium for the existing Core 2 Extreme Quad-Core is due for a bit of a trim off the top, and enthusiasts may be waiting to see what kind of value is in store.

Also speeding up along Intel's "tick-tock" evolutionary path is its front-side bus speed, which is now officially cranked up to 1.6 GHz (1600 MHz). But we know for a fact now that the front-side bus itself will soon become a remnant of computing's past, as Intel is slated to adopt its new QuickPath Interconnect architecture - analogous to AMD's long-standing DirectConnect - with its second-generation 45 nm architecture, slated for late 2008.

Naturally, the Penryn generation won't just be a universal drop-in component. While existing motherboards featuring Intel's existing 5000-series chipsets (5000X, 5000P, and 5000V) will support Penryns, they're not exactly ancient systems just yet. Part of Intel's plan with the "tick-tock" cadence is for the existing high-end chipset at the time of each "tick" to become the drop-in support chipset when "tock" comes along, and vice versa. It's with that background that the 5400-series chipsets are coming for what will likely be numbered the Xeon 5400 series CPUs; and we can probably expect a high-class and mid-range X and P series for servers and a V class for workstations as well.

Today, a motherboard with a 5000X chipset typically sells for under $500. So given Intel's apparent plan to match price points between the current and Penryn generations, we can probably expect "5400X" motherboards to sell for around the same level by after the holidays.

This afternoon, Intel gave us the first peek at Penryn performance in the server class, reporting an unofficial benchmark result: A Fujitsu-Siemens Primergy RX300 S4 server with a 5400-class chip installed reportedly turned in a 138 peak score on the SPECint_rate 2006 test. That's extremely impressive given the fact that the RX300 is an older and venerable design, first appearing on the scene in early 2004; according to Intel, though, the system did have its chipset swapped out for a 5400-series.

For comparison: SPEC's database this afternoon reports a Primergy RX300 S3 with a 3.0 GHz Xeon X5365 processor installed, turned in a peak score of 107. That system probably featured the Primergy's current, native 5000-series chipset.