Intel touts Nehalem as its greenest processor

Th chip giant is touting better energy efficiency and speed

Intel is claiming that the new Nehalem processor due out in November will be its greenest to date.

The company said the systems it has built into its platforms and the technology used are revolutionary, so much so that Gordon Moore, co-founder of the company, called its 45nm transistors the company’s greatest advancement ever.

The high-k metal gate technology in the systems uses the element Hafnium to overcome the problems of building transistors on such a small scale. The company says the new design gives major improvements in both energy efficiency and speed.

“I don’t know how many hours we’ve spent arguing about power over features. If a feature added performance but used more power; it’s been a very different mindset for Nehalem,” said Intel architect Ronak Singhal.

In addition to better gates, the Nehalem platform will come with an embedded controller to dynamically manage power not just on the processor but also on the whole platform itself, what Intel calls the Uncore.

The controller has as many transistors as an old 486 processor and uses monitors on the chip and the platform to constantly keep power requirements at a minimum. This includes concentrating processing on the fewest number of processor cores as possible.

The reason for this new approach to chip design is simple – customers are demanding it. Singhal said that 42 per cent of datacentre managers expected to run out of available power by 2010 and were currently spending 50 cents on cooling and power for every dollar they spent on hardware.

“Energy efficiency is a requirement to get a foot in the door,” said Steve Gunther, another Intel architect.

“If it’s not energy efficient then a company or government won’t buy the system at all.”