Intel microarchitectures: a quick review to date

Intel Microarchitectures: Nehalem and Westmere

The first generation of Core i5 and i7 processors was known as the Nehalem microarchitecture. As an overview, it was based on the 45nm process, with higher clock speeds and higher energy efficiency. It has hyperthreading, but Intel reduced the size of the L2 cache. To compensate, the L3 cache size has been increased and shared across all cores.

With the Nehalem architecture, you get integrated Intel HD graphics as well as a native memory controller that is capable of supporting two to three channels of DDR3 SDRAM memory or four FB-DIMM2 channels.

As you may have noticed, Nehalem does not cover Core i3; however, the Westmere microarchitecture does, which was introduced in 2010. Core i5 and Core i7 were available under Nehalem, but Core i3 was not introduced until 2010 alongside the Westmere architecture. Under Westmere, you can get processors of up to 10 cores with clock speeds that in some cases reach up to 4.4 GHz.

And why not… Intel Atom (2008)?

Processors for mobile and embedded use are much needed in our growing mobile world. While Intel has met some of those needs with variations of Skylake and other processors, Intel Atom is more of a true processor for laptops, as that is the Atom's goal: to meet the needs of mobile teams.

The Intel Atom was originally released in 2008, intended to provide a solution for netbooks and a variety of integrated applications in different industries, such as healthcare. It was originally designed in the 45nm process, but in 2012 it was brought up to the 22nm process. The first generation of Atom processors was based on the Bonnell microarchitecture.

Compared to the rest of the processors we have listed, it is a fairly unknown processor. But it powers a lot of health care equipment, as well as equipment for other services we use.

Most variations of the Intel Atom have an integrated GPU. And, typically, you'll see very low clock speeds with Intel Atom CPUs. But keep in mind that this is not a bad thing. The main difference between Intel's Core processors and the Atom is that the Atom was designed for very low-power, low-performance applications. Efficiency is the key here.

Sandy Bridge and Ivy Bridge

Eventually, the Sandy Bridge and Ivy Bridge microarchitectures would replace Nehalem and Westmere in 2011. This led to notable improvements to the Core i3, i5 and i7 line.

Sandy Bridge uses the 32nm fabrication process, while Ivy Bridge uses an even better 22nm process. On the Sandy Bridge side, some notable improvements include Turbo Boost 2.0 and a shared L3 cache that includes the graphics of the processor in socket H2.

Clock speeds can reach 3.5 GHz (Turbo up to 4.0 GHz). Ivy Bridge has some significant improvements over Sandy Bridge. This includes support for PCI Express 3.0, 16-bit floating-point conversion instructions, multiple 4K video playback, and support for up to 3 displays.

Looking at the actual figures, there is a 6% increase in CPU performance compared to Sandy Bridge. But nevertheless, you get between 25% and 68% more performance on the GPU.

Haswell and Broadwell

The successor to the Ivy Bridge was Haswell, which was introduced in 2013. Many of the features that were in the Ivy Bridge were moved to Haswell, but there are also many new features.

As for the sockets, it came in LGA 1150 and LGA 2011. Graphic support for Direct3D 11.1 and OpenGL 4.3 was added, as well as support for Thunderbolt technology.

There were also four versions of the integrated GPU: GT1, GT2, GT3, and GT3e. It also came with a ton of new instruction sets: AVX, AVX2, BMI1, BMI2, FMA3, and AES-NI.

With Haswell's microarchitecture, these instruction sets are available for the Core i3, Core i5, and Core i7. Depending on the type of processor you have purchased, the clock speeds can reach up to 4 GHz at a normal operating frequency.

Haswell's successor is Broadwell. There were not many changes, but some notable improvements did. The new functions are mainly related to video. With Broadwell, you get Intel Quick Sync Video, which adds VP8 hardware encoding and decoding.

There is also support for VP9 and HEVC decoding. With the changes quite related to video, support has been added for Direct3D 11.2 and OpenGL 4.4.

As for the clock speed, the basic main processors start at 3.1 GHz and with Turbo Boosted they reach 3.6 GHz.

Skylake, Kaby Lake, Coffee Lake and Cannon Lake

Skylake is the successor to the next generation of Haswell and Broadwell. It is one of the newer variants, which was just launched on the market in mid-2015. Now, it is based on the 14nm process, the same process at Broadwell. However, it does increase CPU and GPU performance in all formats and at the same time reduce power consumption.

As for the features, you get support for Thunderbolt 3.0, SATA Express and an upgrade to Iris Pro graphics. Skylake removed VGA support and added capabilities for up to 5 displays. Two new instruction sets were also added: Intel MPX, Intel SGX, and AVX-512. And on the mobile side, Skylake's CPUs are really capable of being overclocked.

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Kaby Lake is the newest generation of Intel CPUs, having been announced in August 2016. Built on the same 14nm process, Kaby Lake contributes much of the trend we've already been seeing: better CPU speeds and changes in clock speed. New graphics architecture has also been added to Kaby Lake to improve 3D graphics performance and 4K video playback.

Cannon Lake is the one that will replace the architecture of Coffe Lake. It plans to go on sale in late 2018 (or somewhat earlier).

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According to rumors, it will be based on the 10nm process, but will be limited in some sense due to the low yields of the 10nm process.