What’s coming after the Core i7

CanardPC has given some news on Intel’s forthcoming Sandy Bridge architecture. In line with Intel’s “tic-toc” the 32nm will be used first of all for a die-shrink of the current architecture, Westmere, before the arrival of the new Sandy Bridge architecture in the first quarter of 2011.

The first Sandy Bridge samples are reported to have been engraved already. On the 225mm² die there are 4 cores each with 256 KB of L2 and sharing an L3 cache of 8 MB, equivalent to those on the Core i7 but with improved latency. Each of these cores will support HyperThreading of new AVX (Advanced Vector Extension) instructions.

The Northbridge will be built onto the same die, in contrast to how this is managed on Westmere on which there will be a 32 nm dual core and a 45 nm northbridge within the same packaging. The memory controller (DDR3 double channel), the PCI-Express controller as well as an IGP will also be included on this mid-range version. Other lines, with 2 and 8 cores, are also said to be in the pipeline. In terms of the platform, it is likely to be an 1156 type socket, but a new chipset may be necessary which would call into question compatibility with P55 motherboards, planned for the autumn.