Intel On Track To Deliver Penryn, Nehalem

Today at the Intel Developer Forum, Intel CEO Paul Otellini affirmed that Intel's Penryn and Nehalem family of processors are on track for their releases this year and next year, respectively.

"We expect our Penryn processors to provide up to a 20 percent performance increase while improving energy efficiency," said Otellini. "Intel's breakthrough 45nm silicon process technology allows us to provide low-cost, extremely low-power processors for innovative small form factor devices while delivering high-performance, multi-core, multi-featured processors used in the most advanced systems."

Penryn will start shipping in November of this year, and it is expected that Apple will use the variants in its products.

Meanwhile, Otellini also previewed Intel's upcoming new Nehalem architecture.

"Nehalem is an entirely new architecture that leverages Intel's Core Microarchitecture, bringing leading-edge performance advantages, power efficiency and important new server features to market just a year after Intel leads the industry to 45nm technology," said Otellini.

One of Nehalem's advancements will be the use of the QuickPath Interconnect system archetecture, which includes an integrated memory controller and improved communication links between system components to significantly improve overall system performance. An advanced version of hyperthreading will also make a comeback in Nehalem.

While Nehalem will begin on 45nm technology in late-summer 2008, Intel plans to quickly move to 32nm production in 2009. DailyTech notes that Mac OS X successfully boots on Nehalem.