14 DAY TRIAL // Even though Intel isn't expected to launch the Ivy Bridge architecture until the second quarter of 2012, the first engineering samples of these chips were already shipped to the company's partners, and two such CPUs were the subject of a recent leak.
The processors in question are clearly marked as engineering samples and both use the same LGA 1155 packaging as that of the current Sandy Bridge CPUs.
However, the rest of their specifications are different as the first, marked as QAX5, uses a dual-core design and features 4MB of Level 3 cache memory, while the latter includes four processing cores and 8MB of Level 3 cache.
Both these processors have a base frequency of 1800MHz (2.4GHz max in Turbo mode), a TDP of 95W and lack support for integrated graphics. The voltage of the two Ivy Bridge CPUs varies between 0.8 and 1.25 V.
Ivy Bridge is the code name used for the 22nm die shrink of the current Sandy Bridge chips and features basically the same architecture, but with a few minor tweaks and improvements.
This includes a new on-die GPU that will come with full DirectX 11 support as well as with 30% more EUs than Sandy Bridge, in order to offer improved performance.
In addition, the processor cores have also received some minor tweaks as their AVX performance was slightly increased and Intel has updated the integrated PCI Express controller to the 3.0 standard.
This should double the bandwidth available to the 16 PCI Express lanes found inside the chip, from 500MB/s per lane to 1GB/s per lane.
The move will benefit multi-GPU systems as well as users who use high-performance PCI Express SSDs and other such devices that require high data bandwidth.
The rest of the changes brought with Ivy Bridge come from the new 7-series Panther Point chipsets, which pack native USB 3.0 support. (via Zol.com.cn)