Intel Core i7-3770K – Ivy Bridge and the 3D transistor is here

1,4 billion transistors at only 160mm²

Ivy Bridge will be the first 22 nanometer based circuit in the world and today it looks like Intel will have a continued advantage for the next few years. Intel has with their new manufacturing process increased the transistor count by approximately 40 percent in comparison to Sandy Bridge and at the same time managed to shrink the circuits surface area from 216 mm² to only 160 mm².

While Ivy bridge is just a Tick in Intel’s Tick-Tock schedule they have still made a major increase in transistors. In every Tick Intel makes small changes and adjustments to get higher performance and power effiency, also fixing bugs in the architecture. Although that’s not enough to cover and justify a 40 percent increase.

In the new Gen 7 graphics architecture which is a development of their Gen 6 architecture and can be found in Sandry Bridge, Ivy Bridge comes with an improved integrated graphics circuit. The idea is to offer as much as possible, and in the future everything that’s needed in a computer on one single piece of silicon.

What we can expect in the future is a similar trend that will continue. Instead of making everything as tiny as possible the new manufacturing processes will be used to continue the integration of several components on one die. The integer unit, the memory controller, the northbridge and the graphics is just a few of the parts that has been built into the processor. At this point it’s just a matter of time before the southbridge will be built in – and in time even the RAM-memory.