Intel Core i7 Processor

 Intel Core i7 Processor

History

•         In the early 1970’s the first Microprocessor was developed by Intel.

•         It was a 4 bit machine that was named the 4004

•         The 4004 was followed by Intel’s 8008 and 8080, as well as Motorola’s                6800 and 68000

Growth

With each new generation of processors there were several developments            such as:

•         Smaller size

•         Faster

•         Increased heat dissipation

•         Greater Consumption of power

Single Core Performance

On technique used to increase single core performance was:

•         Pipelining: beginning other waiting instructions before the first finishes

Another technique was multithreading

•         Multithreading involves execution of two separate threads.

•         Time is divided and interlaced between the two threads in order to                      simulate simultaneous execution

Problems with Single Core

To execute the tasks faster you must increase the clock time.

Increasing clock times too high drastically increases power consumption and heat dissipation to extremely high levels, making the processor inefficient.

Multi Core solution

Creating two cores or more on the same Die increases processing power while keeping clock speeds at an efficient level.

A processor with 2 cores running at efficient clock speeds can process instructions with similar speed to a single core processor running at twice the clock speed, yet the dual core processor would still consume less energy.

Multi-Core Advantages

•         While working with many threads, a Multi Core processor with n cores can execute n threads simultaneously by assigning a core to each thread. If it must process more than n threads , say x, it can apply multithreading procedures with each core working with an average of x/n threads.

•         A Single core processor must multithread with every single thread.

History of Processor’s :

•         Generally Intel has been the dominant producer

           of microprocessor chips

•         AMD has proven to be a fierce competitor

•         Competition stimulated the industry by producing new and innovative                  microprocessors

•         In  the mid-nineties Intel begins to face true competition

•         1980’s-Intel was the only true producer of marketable computer chips

•         1982-introduce 80286

•         286 was able to run software of its prior microprocessor

INTEL CORE i7 PROCESSOR

A cpu socket or cpu slot is an electrical component that attaches to a circuit board and is designed to house a cpu. It is a special type of IC socket designed for very high pin counts. A cpu socket provides many functions including providing a physical structure to support the cpu, facilitating replacement and cost reduction and as an electrical interface both with the cpu and the circuit board.

Core i7 uses an LGA1366 socket.(socket B). it is incompatible with the previous versions. LGA refers to Land Grid Array and is used as a physical interface for microprocessors of the Intel Pentium 4, Intel Xeon, Intel Core 2 and AMD Opteron families. Earlier the socket used was the PGA(Pin Grid Array). In LGA there are no pins on the chip .Instead there are pads of gold plated copper that touch pins on the motherboard. LGA provides a larger contact point, allowing for eg higher clock frequencies. It also allows higher pin densities and thus enables a more stable power supply to the chip

The memory is directly connected to the processor. The memory is divided into three channels. Each channel can support one or two DDR3 RAMs. Motherboards for core i7 have three or six RAM slots.DDR3 RAM is double data rate 3 random access memory. This is a RAM technology used for high speed storage of the working data of a computer or other digital electronic devices. The primary benefit of DDR3 is its ability to run its I/O bus at four times the speed of the memory cells contained in it. It enables faster bus speeds and higher throughputs than earlier memory technologies. There is a significant reduction in the power consumption. It needs only 1.5V compared to 1.8V for DDR2

HOW IT WORKS:

The instruction decoder has three decoder units that can decode one simple instruction per cycle per unit. The other decoder unit can decode one instruction every cycle, either simple instruction or complex instruction made up of several micro-ops. Instructions made up of more than four micro-ops are delivered from the MSROM. Upto four micro-ops can be delivered each cycle to the instruction decoder queue (IDQ).The IDQ delivers micro-op stream to the allocation/renaming stage of the pipeline.

The out-of-order engine supports up to 128 micro-ops in flight. Each micro-ops must be allocated with the following resources: an entry in the re-order buffer (ROB), an entry in the reservation station (RS), and a load/store buffer if a memory access is required. The allocator also renames the register file entry of each micro-op in flight. The input data associated with a micro-op are generally either read from the ROB or from the retired register file.

The RS dispatch up to six micro-ops in one cycle if the micro-ops are ready to execute. The RS dispatch a micro-op through an issue port to a specific execution cluster, each cluster may contain a collection of integer/FP/SIMD execution units. The result from the execution unit executing a micro-op is written back to the register file, or forwarded through a bypass network to a micro-op in-flight that needs the result. Intel microarchitecture (Nehalem) can support write back throughput of one register file write per cycle per port. The bypass network  consists of three domains of integer/FP/SIMD. Forwarding the result within the same bypass domain from a producer micro-op to a consumer micro is done efficiently in hardware without delay.

Forwarding the result across different bypass domains may be subject to additional bypass delays. The bypass delays may be visible to software in addition to the latency and throughput characteristics of individual execution units. Intel microarchitecture (Nehalem) contains an instruction cache, a first-level data cache and a second-level unified cache in each core. Each physical processor may contain several processor cores and a shared collection of subsystems that are referred to as "uncore".

Specifically in Intel Core i7 processor, the  uncore provides a unified third-level cache shared by all cores in the physical processor, Intel Quick Path Interconnect links and associated logic. The L1 and L2 caches are writing back and non-inclusive. The shared L3 cache is write back and inclusive, such that a cache line that exists in  either L1 data cache, L1 instruction cache, unified L2 cache also exists in L3. The L3 is designed to use the inclusive nature to minimize snoop traffic between processor cores. The latency of L3 access may vary as a function of the frequency ratio between the processor and the uncore sub-system

Features and Benefits of the Intel® Core™ i7 Processor

Quad-Core Processing

Provides four independent execution cores in one processor package. Four dedicated processing cores help

Operating systems and applications deliver additional performance, so end users can experience better

multitasking and multithreaded performance across many types of applications and workloads.

Intel® Hyper-Threading Technology3

Delivers  two processing threads per physical core for a total of eight threads for massive computational throughput. With Intel® Hyper-Threading Technology, highly threaded applications can get more work done in parallel, completing tasks sooner. With more threads available to the operating system, multitasking becomes even easier. This amazing processor can handle multiple applications working simultaneously, allowing you to do more with less wait time.

Intel® Turbo Boost Technology2

Dynamically increases the processor’s frequency as needed by taking advantage of thermal and power headroom when operating below specified limits. Get more performance automatically, when you need it the most.

8 MB Intel® Smart Cache

This large last-level cache enables dynamic and efficient allocation of shared cache to all four cores to match the needs of various applications for ultra-efficient data storage and manipulation.

Intel® QuickPath Interconnect

Intel’s latest system interconnect design increases bandwidth and lowers latency, while achieving data

transfer speeds as high as 25.6 GB/s.

Integrated Memory Controller

An integrated memory controller with three channels of DDR3 1066 MHz offers memory performance

up to 25.6 GB/s. Combined with the processor’s efficient prefetching algorithms, this memory controller’s

lower latency and higher memory bandwidth delivers amazing performance for data-intensive applications.

Intel® HD Boost

Includes the full SSE4 instruction set, significantly improving a broad range of multimedia and compute intensive applications. The 128-bit SSE instructions are issued at a throughput rate of one per clock cycle

allowing a new level of processing efficiency with SSE4-optimized applications.

Digital Thermal Sensor (DTS)

Provides for more efficient processor and platform thermal control improving system acoustics. The DTS

continuously measures the temperature at each processing core. The ability to continuously measure and

detect variations in processor temperature enables system fans to spin only as fast as needed to cool the

system. The combination of these technologies can result in significantly lower noise emissions from the PC.

Intel® Wide Dynamic Execution

Improves execution speed and efficiency, delivering more instructions per clock cycle. Each core can complete up to four full instructions simultaneously.

Intel® Smart Memory Access

Improves system performance by optimizing the use of the available data bandwidth from the memory

subsystem and reducing the effective latency of memory accesses.

The latest version of Intel Core i7 processor’s is

4th Generation Intel® Core™ i7 Processor

Amazing performance and stunning visuals at their best. Get top-of-the-line performance for your most demanding tasks with a 4th generation Intel® Core™ i7 processor. For a difference you can see and feel in HD and 3-D, multitasking and multimedia, the 4th generation Intel Core i7 processor is perfect for all your most demanding tasks.

Effortlessly move through applications with smart multitasking from Intel® Hyper-Threading Technology1. Enjoy the thrill of an automatic burst of speed when you need it with Intel® Turbo Boost Technology 2.02. Experience your movies, photos, and games smoothly and seamlessly with a suite of built-in visual enhancements—no extra hardware required.

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