Intel is back: After debuting in the Xeon 5100 ("Woodcrest") processor about a month ago, "Core" will power the firm's new Core 2 Duo mobile and desktop processors.
The "basic" version of the processor is called Core 2 Duo and is available as the E6000 series (formerly code-named "Conroe") for desktop computers and as T5000/T7000 series (formerly code-named "Merom") for notebooks. The "E" indicates a power consumptio
The flagship Core 2 Duo is the $1000 Core 2 Extreme X6800, the fastest desktop processor money can buy these days. The CPU is clocked at 2.93 GHz. Intel already confirmed that it will follow up with a faster version later this year. Some PC manufacturers,
Desktop Core 2 Duo processors will be available with the currently available 975X and 946 chipset, but are expected to mainly appear in combination with the 963 and 965 series (G, P and Q versions) of chipsets.
Actual picture of a Conroe die: The chip has a total of 291 million transistors. Note on the right side the two symmetrically aligned cores and the shared L2 cache on the left (4MB for Core 2 Duo E6000 and T7000; 2 MB for the T5000 and the upcoming E4000.
The complete "Core" line-up: Woodcrest (Xeon 5100) as well as the two new Core 2 Duos Merom and Conroe. Merom provides the technology foundation for Conroe and Woodcrest.
Intel will be ramping Core as fast as it can. 15% of its desktop processors shipped in Q3 will be Conroes. Note that the share will be almost 40% in Q1 of next year.
A similar picture for desktop chipsets: The desktop-focused 965 series will ramp parallel to Conroe.
The road to Core 2 Duo: The idea and foundation for Merom can be tracked back to "Banias," the first Pentium M processor. Dothan was introduced as a 90 nm version of Banias, the 65 nm Yonah (Core Duo) was introduced in January (with wide availability begi
Another distant ancestor of Merom: The Pentium III was Intel's first processor that came with "Speedstep" technology, which automatically decreased the clock speed of the processor when a notebook was running in battery mode. Interestingly, Speedstep was
Merom's predecessor: Core Duo ("Yonah") processors on a 300 mm wafer.
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