One of Intel’s biggest advantages has been its ability to move on to new manufacturing nodes fast and it has been able to stay one step ahead of the competition (read: AMD). By being the first to announce new and more architectures it has reached higher clock frequencies and cut production costs. Even though Intel has had its share of problems when switching nodes, among others the 90nm NetBurst technology, the new 32nm Westmere architecture is almost too good.
Intel recently launched the first products in the form of Clarkdale and Arrandale where two 32nm CPU cores are paired with the new integrated GPU. The fact is that Intel’s 32 nanometer technology have been mature for months now.
Wafer with Intel’s 32 nanometer Clarkdale dies
According to our sources it had 32nm-based Westmere processors capable of 6GHz back in July 2009, twice the speed the first retail processor ship at, six months later. This was confirmed in September when the first overclocked results with Gulftown appeared with the clock frequency tuned to marvelous 6,4GHz.
We have witnessed Clarkdale breaking 7GHz and even if this is just two cores we can wait for Gulftown, Core i7 980X, to launch in Q2 2010. With six 32 nanometer cores and 12 threads through HyperThreading this looks like monster that will take advantage of the extremely good yields Intel has at the 32 nanometer node. We saw the first real test a few days ago when it ravaged the ORB and collected all top results in the Hall of Fame.
Intel Clarkdale and Intel H57 chipset
