Intel Releases New Design in Silvermont Microarchitecture

Intel’s (News - Alert) new Silvermont microarchitecture is stated to be a new design in its 22nm Tri-Gate SOC process. It should cater to the low-power requirements of the market and overcome the performance and energy efficiency limitations of the current generation Intel Atom processor cores.

Intel explained that it deployed a fundamentally different technology for future microprocessor families: 3-D transistors manufactured at 22nm. These new transistors enable Intel to continue to relentlessly pursue Moore’s Law and to ensure that the pace of technology advancement consumers expect can continue for years to come. These Tri-Gate transistors supposedly deliver an unprecedented combination of performance and power efficiency.

Dadi Perlmutter, Intel executive vice president and chief product officer, commented, “Silvermont is a leap forward, and an entirely new technology foundation for the future that will address a broad range of products and market segments. Early sampling of our 22nm SoCs, including ‘Bay Trail’ and ‘Avoton,’ is already garnering positive feedback from our customers. Going forward, we will accelerate future generations of this low-power microarchitecture on a yearly cadence.”

Some of the notable highlights of the new Silvermont microarchitecture include: a new execution engine that ensures high quality single-threaded performance; a multi-core and system fabric architecture that delivers low latency and supports a balanced and responsive system; IA instructions and technologies that are tweaked to offer improved performance, virtualization and security management capabilities; and Intel Burst Technology 2.0 enhances power efficiency.

Intel asserted that Silvermont leverages the company’s strength in microarchitecture design and development in order to offer a technology package that is capable of acting as a strong and flexible foundation for any range of new, low-power Intel SoCs.

Intel added that it is also delivering improved advancements on its next-generation, 22nm Haswell microarchitecture for Intel Core processors to enable full-PC performance at lower power levels for innovative ‘2-in-1’ form factors and other mobile devices.