SAN FRANCISCO -- Intel is expected to formally roll outtoday Ivy Bridge, its first processors using its 22nm tri-gate technology andaimed at ultra thin and light notebooks. An analyst said the chips will narrowarchrival AMD's lead in graphics performance and inject new life into thenotebook market under attack from tablets such as the Apple iPad.
AMD is said to be on the cusp of rolling out itsnext-generation CPUs, called Trinity. The chips are built in a 32nm process.AMD is not expected to field chips using the still scarce 28-nm process until2013.
By that time Intel will be moving on to Haswell, its firstnew microarchitecture to use its 22-nm process. Intel typically gains a 10 to 20%performance advantage with the first chips, such as Ivy Bridge, to use a newprocess and a bigger performance boost for a new design, such as Haswell,optimized for that process, said Nathan Brookwood, principal of market watcherInsight64 (Saratoga, Calif.).
Ivy Bridge "will be very reminiscent of the state of playbetween Intel and AMD in recent years," said Brookwood.
"The x86 cores in Ivy Bridge will likely outperform those ofTrinity, but Trinity's graphics cores will probably outperform those in IvyBridge," he said.
Ivy Bridge marks Intel's first chips with graphics thatsupport Microsoft's latest DirectX 11 graphics APIs, an edge AMD used to claimfor itself. "Now AMD has to make an argument its implementation of DX11 issuperior to Intel's and that's a tougher argument to make," Brookwood said.
Both companies will support BGA packages with their newchips so processors can be soldered on to a motherboard without a socket,enabling the so-called ultrabooks, thin and light notebooks that ape the AppleMacBook Air.
Intel defined the ultrabook category including a range ofsystems specifications on their start-up time, thickness, security features andother requirements. The specs drives costs for the systems which currentlyhover around $1,000 but could fall to $700-$800 later this year. Intel Capitalcreated a $300 million fund to support the ultrabook concept.
By contrast, AMD is not requiring adherence to an ultrabooksystem spec. Thus its generally lower cost Trinity chips may be used to powercheaper thin and light notebooks that don't bear the ultrabook name but cost aslittle as $600, Brookwood estimated.
AMD has typically battled with Intel offering at lowerprices chips with roughly similar features and performance. At an event here,Intel is expected to show systems using Ivy Bridge chips in ultrabooks.Versions for servers should follow later this year.
This story was originally published by EETimes.
