White Paper: The All New 2010 Intel® Core™ vPro™ Processor Family: Intelligence that Adapts to Your Needs

Intel® Hyper-Threading Technology

Intel HT Technology allows each processor core to work on two tasks at the same time. This typically doubles the number of threads being executed (see Figure 8). With Intel HT Technology, computational latency is reduced, and every clock cycle is used to its optimum potential. For example, while one thread is waiting for a result or event, another thread can execute in that core, minimizing down cycles.

With faster performance, users can get more accomplished in less time. This results in a more efficient use of processor resources – higher processing throughput – and improved performance on the multithreaded applications of today and tomorrow. Businesses can now:

•Run demanding desktop applications simultaneously without slowing down.

•Reduce the burden of security applications that process in the background, minimizing their impact on productivity, yet still keep systems more secure, efficient, and manageable.

•Provide headroom for future business growth.

Intel® Core™2 Quad Processor,

the previous-generation Intel® Core™ Processor

Core

THREAD 1

Core

THREAD 2

Core

THREAD 3

Core

THREAD 4

 

Most multi-core processors enable you to execute one software thread per processor core

New 2010 Intel® Core™ i7 vPro™ Processor with Intel® Hyper-Threading Technology

Core

THREAD 2

 

THREAD 1

Core

THREAD 4

 

THREAD 3

Core

THREAD 6

 

THREAD 5

Core

THREAD 8

 

THREAD 7

A new 2010 Intel® Core™ i7 vPro™ processor doubles the number of software threads that can be processed at one time

Figure 8. Intel® Hyper-Threading Technology allows each core to execute two threads at the same time. This can dramatically increase performance for heavily threaded OSs and applications, such as Microsoft Windows* 7 and Microsoft Office* 2007.

No more front-side-bus (FSB)

The all new 2010 Intel® Core™ vPro™ processor family no longer has a front-side bus (FSB). Instead, these processors enhance Intel® Smart Cache with a shared L3 (last level) cache that can be up to 8 MB in size.

In previous generations of Intel® Core™ processors, an external bi-directional data bus (the FSB) was used to keep instructions and traffic flowing quickly to the processor. However, as processors have grown more powerful and as the number of processing cores has increased, the FSB has become a limiting factor for the speed at which a microprocessor and its execution cores can access system memory.

The all new 2010 Intel Core vPro processor family eliminates this bottleneck by adding a new high-speed interconnect, and embedding an L3 cache into the microarchitecture. L3 cache is shared across all processor cores. Key benefits of L3 cache include more opportunities to take advantage of hyper-threading, and an increase in overall performance while reducing traffic to the cores. A new 2010 Intel Core vPro processor includes:

•New fully inclusive, fully shared up to 8 MB L3 cache – all applica- tions can use the entire cache

•New L2 cache per core, for very low latency: 256 KB per core for handling data and instructions

•Same L1 cache as previous Intel® Core™ microarchitecture:

32 KB instruction cache, 32 KB data cache

For new 2010 Intel Core vPro processors, look for an L3 designation instead of an FSB number.

 

 

For best performance

 

 

in the new generation

Specification

What it means

of processors, look for:

Clock speed

Measures how fast a proces-

Faster (higher number)

 

sor processes data.

 

 

 

 

Intel®

Level 3 cache, which is

More (higher number)

Smart Cache

shared between the cores,

 

Technology

speeds up data accesses and

 

 

reduces data bottlenecks.

 

 

 

 

FSB

An interconnect used in

None (the FSB has

 

previous-generation Intel®

been replaced with a new

 

Core™ processor-based PCs.

higher speed interconnect

 

 

and shared L3 cache)

 

 

 

Intel® Turbo

Dynamically accelerates

Faster (higher number)

Boost

performance up to 20%

 

Technology3

faster (if processor load

 

 

allows) when faced with

 

 

a demanding task.

 

 

 

 

Multicore

The number of cores

More (higher number)

designation

available for processing

 

 

data. Multiple cores allows

 

 

for faster multitasking and

 

 

improved performance with

 

 

multi-threaded applications.

 

 

 

 

Intel® Hyper-

The number of tasks

More (higher number)

Threading

that can be executed

 

Technology6

simultaneously.

 

 

 

 

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