14 DAY TRIAL // The International Solid State Circuits Conference that started yesterday brought some more details about Intel's upcoming 45-nanometer processor for ultra-mobile PCs and mobile Internet devices (MIDs). Codenamed Silverthorne, the chip will be a single-core part that comes with Intel's HyperThreading technology that dates back in the Pentium era.
Built with low power consumption in mind, the Silverthorne will consume less than 2 watts of power, ten times lower than the most energy-efficient x86 chip on the market. Due to a special modular design, most of the time the CPU will draw only an insignificant 1W. This efficiency state is achieved as the key structures of the processor are powered independently (the address and data buses, for instance).
The processor features deeper power sleep states than other mobile CPUs. All these new features allow the chip cut power consumption to a minimum but, at the same time, the leakage power is kept under control by the new 45-nanometer Hi-K technology. Therefore, the chip will take up a tenth of the power required by an ultra-low voltage CPU.
According to Intel, the Silverthorne will run a 16-stage dual-issue in-order instruction pipeline (inspired by an older Intel technology), but it will be fully compatible with the instruction set of the Core 2 Duo processor family. Hyperthreading will emulate a second processor core, but the chip will be far from achieving the performance of a native two-core CPU. At the same time, its performance will be much improved over a single-core part that currently powers the ultra-mobile devices on the market.
Intel did not mention the actual core speed of the Silverthorne, but stated that its design will be scaled " to deliver 2GHz clock speeds with a 1W power consumption" later this year. The Silverthorne will accompany the Poulsbo chipset in the Menlow platform. The whole platform is expected to emerge in the April-May timeframe.