Thursday, 16 August 2007

Intel’s Penryn Expected November

Intel is reportedly preparing to launch its anticipated 45nm quad-core Penryn processor on November 11...

Intel is reportedly preparing to launch its anticipated 45nm quad-core Penryn processor on November 11. According to some, Penryn will come with clock speeds ranging from 2GHz to 3.16GHz operating on a 1333MHz frontside bus and packing 12MB of L2 cache.

The company has officially said it will start production in the second half of this year, but has not set a launch date.

The Penryn is expected to outperform AMD’s Barcelona Opteron processor, which is due to premier Sept. 10. According to Intel, Penryn is the first chip to use High-K and metal gate transistors, which reduces power consumption. All chips except for the 120W 3.16GHz model will have thermal ratings of 80W. The site also lists a pair of low-voltage Xeons scheduled to be launched in Q1 2008 with thermal ratings of 50W.

Prices for Penryn-based Intel Xeon processors will reportedly range from USD 209 for the 2GHz model all the way to USD 1,172 for the 3.16GHz.