Let’s celebrate the #NATIONALTRAINYOURBRAINDAY by learning the history of INTEL – the pioneers, the developers of great MICROPROCESSORS.
IBM was the creator and assembler of the first ever PCs, and their prime choice of the processor was Intel. Thus, Intel’s processor was named as the 1st Generation of processors. More generations followed. Let’s take a sneak peak at some of these line of processors created by Intel over the course of time.
1st Generation: Nehalem is the codename for an Intel processor microarchitecture, which is the successor to the older Core microarchitecture. A preview system with two Nehalem processors was shown at Intel Developer Forum in 2007, and the first processor released with the Nehalem architecture was the desktop Core i7, which was released in November 2008.
2nd Generation: Sandy Bridge is the codename for a microarchitecture developed by Intel beginning in 2005 for central processing units in computers to replace the Nehalem microarchitecture. Intel demonstrated a Sandy Bridge processor in 2009, and released first products based on the architecture in January 2011 under the Core brand. Developed primarily by the Israeli branch of Intel, the codename was originally “Gesher” (meaning “bridge” in Hebrew).
Sandy Bridge implementations targeted a 32 nanometer manufacturing process, while Intel’s subsequent product, codenamed Ivy Bridge, uses a 22 nanometer process. The Ivy Bridge die shrink, known in the Intel Tick-Tock model as the “tick”, is based on FinFET (non-planar, “3D”) tri-gate transistors. Intel demonstrated the Ivy Bridge processors in 2011.
3rd Generation: Ivy Bridge is the codename for a line of processors based on the 22 nm manufacturing process developed by Intel. The name is also applied more broadly to the 22 nm die shrink of the Sandy Bridge microarchitecture based on FinFET (“3D”) tri-gate transistors, which is also used in the Xeon and Core i7 Ivy Bridge-EX (Ivytown), Ivy Bridge-EP and Ivy Bridge-E microprocessors released in 2013.
Ivy Bridge processors are backwards compatible with the Sandy Bridge platform, but such systems might require a firmware update (vendor specific). In 2011, Intel released the 7-series Panther Point chipsets with integrated USB 3.0 to complement Ivy Bridge.
Volume production of Ivy Bridge chips began in the third quarter of 2011. Quad-core and dual-core-mobile models launched on 29 April 2012 and 31 May 2012 respectively. Core i3 desktop processors, as well as the first 22 nm Pentium, were announced and available the first week of September, 2012.
4th Generation: Haswell is the codename for a processor microarchitecture developed by Intel as the successor to the Ivy Bridge microarchitecture. Intel officially announced CPUs based on this microarchitecture on June 4, 2013 at Computex Taipei 2013, while a working Haswell chip was demonstrated at the 2011 Intel Developer Forum. With Haswell, which uses a 22 nm process, Intel also introduced low-power processors designed for convertible or “hybrid” ultrabooks, designated by the “Y” suffix.
Haswell CPUs are used in conjunction with the Intel 8 Series chipsets and Intel 9 Series chipsets.
5th Generation: Broadwell is Intel’s codename for the 14 nanometer die shrink of its Haswell microarchitecture. It is a “tick” in Intel’s tick-tock principle as the next step in semiconductor fabrication. Unlike the previous tick-tock iterations, Broadwell will not completely replace the full range of CPUs from the previous microarchitecture (Haswell), as there will be no low-end desktop CPUs based on Broadwell.[4]
Broadwell’s H and C variants will be used in conjunction with Intel 9 Series chipsets (Z97, H97 and HM97), in addition to retaining backward compatibility with some of the Intel 8 Series chipsets.
6th Generation: Skylake is the codename used by Intel for the 6th generation Core processor microarchitecture which was launched in August 2015 as the successor to the Broadwell microarchitecture. Skylake is a microarchitecture redesign using an already existing process technology, serving as a “tock” in the Intel’s “tick-tock” manufacturing and design model. According to Intel, the redesign brings greater CPU and GPU performance and reduced power consumption. Skylake uses the same 14 nm manufacturing process as Broadwell.
The majority of the content (in this article) has been taken from the WIKI-PEDIA and the purpose is to let our readers aware of microprocessors evaluation.
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