Features
The Core microarchitecture returned to lower clock rates and improved the usage of both available clock cycles and power when compared with the preceding NetBurst microarchitecture of the Pentium 4/D-branded CPUs. The Core microarchitecture provides more efficient decoding stages, execution units, caches, and buses, reducing the power consumption of Core 2-branded CPUs while increasing their processing capacity. Intel's CPUs have varied widely in power consumption according to clock rate, architecture, and semiconductor process, shown in the CPU power dissipation tables.
Like the last NetBurst CPUs, Core based processors feature multiple cores and hardware virtualization support (marketed as Intel VT-x), as well as Intel 64 and SSSE3. However, Core-based processors do not have the Hyper-Threading Technology found in Pentium 4 processors. This is because the Core microarchitecture is a descendant of the P6 microarchitecture used by Pentium Pro, Pentium II, Pentium III, and Pentium M.
The L1 cache size was enlarged in the Core microarchitecture, from 32KB on Pentium II/III (16 KB L1 Data + 16 KB L1 Instruction) to 64 KB L1 cache/core (32 KB L1 Data + 32 KB L1 Instruction) on Pentium M and Core/Core 2. It also lacks an L3 Cache found in the Gallatin core of the Pentium 4 Extreme Edition, although an L3 Cache is present in high-end versions of Core-based Xeons. Both an L3 cache and Hyper-threading were reintroduced in the Nehalem microarchitecture.
Read more about this topic: Intel Core (microarchitecture)
Famous quotes containing the word features:
“It is a tribute to the peculiar horror of contemporary life that it makes the worst features of earlier times—the stupefaction of the masses, the obsessed and driven lives of the bourgeoisie—seem attractive by comparison.”
—Christopher Lasch (b. 1932)
“However much we may differ in the choice of the measures which should guide the administration of the government, there can be but little doubt in the minds of those who are really friendly to the republican features of our system that one of its most important securities consists in the separation of the legislative and executive powers at the same time that each is acknowledged to be supreme, in the will of the people constitutionally expressed.”
—Andrew Jackson (1767–1845)
““It looks as if
Some pallid thing had squashed its features flat
And its eyes shut with overeagerness
To see what people found so interesting
In one another, and had gone to sleep
Of its own stupid lack of understanding,
Or broken its white neck of mushroom stuff
Short off, and died against the windowpane.””
—Robert Frost (1874–1963)