Up close with Intel's Sandy Bridge processors

Intel's Sandy Bridge desktop processor. Photo / Supplied

Having given many a geek hot flushes with their Nehalem chips last year, Intel's next big PC processor, the Sandy Bridge is about to hit retailer shelves alongside new motherboards and chipsets amidst a blaze of tech media hype and geek salivation.

According to Intel's Sydney based Technology Director, Graham Tucker, Sandy Bridge is the second generation of Intel's Core processor chip line-up. Whilst earlier generations of the engines powering most PCs were sold on raw gigahertz grunt, the new processors are now being marketed on overall performance and features (e.g. the number of processor cores).

Under the Hood

Intel may have incorporated a graphics into earlier processor chip packages, but with Sandy Bridge, they've actually managed to put the graphics processor on the same silicon as the CPU whose components also include four cores, all of which have been shrunk down to a positively tiny 32 nanometres for improved energy efficiency and performance.

A nanometre mightn't sound like much, but consider this: It takes one billion of them to make a metre and a billion is a truly massive number. If you stacked a billion sheets of A4 paper on top of each other reach 100km high. A boggling 60 million of the 32 nanometre sized transistors used on a Sandy Bridge chip could fit on the head of a pin.

Smaller chip components means more can be crammed onto a chip, dramatically increasing its computing power, while decreasing the amount of power consumed to do the computing.

Decreased energy use is definitely the case with the Sandy Bridge, whose 4 processor cores consumes roughly the same amount of power as earlier generation two-core CPUs. In a practical sense this translates into thinner, lighter and more powerful PCs that'll also hopefully run cooler (so there's less lap scorch) and longer when away from the power plug (which is great news for travellers).

There are also bigger consequences too - current estimates are that the world's PCs account for 3 per cent of global carbon emissions, so any reductions in energy consumption can only be a good thing.

Intel are also confident that the Sandy Bridge's integrated on chip graphics capabilities are up to snuff. According to Tucker, different iterations of Sandy bridge can incorporate one of two different graphics engines (called the GT1 and GT2), with both suitable for gaming.

From a manufacturing standpoint, having graphics built into the CPU should theoretically result in cheaper, thinner and lighter notebooks as separate, bulky (and more costly) discrete graphics hardware need not be used.

The secret sauce underpinning Sandy bridge's improved graphics performance is the addition of a new instruction set built into the CPU called Advanced Vector Instructions, or AVX.

AVX allows the Sandy Bridge processors graphics engine to effectively process more pixels per CPU clock cycle, leading to more peeper-pleasing on-screen eye candy in applications with AVX support.

Rounding things out, Sandy Bridge also incorporates embedded display port technology for easier screen connectivity, PCI express connectivity for hooking up peripherals, 6Gbps SATA support for zippy storage (which should really come into its own when used with solid state hard drives).

Pundits have also questioned why Sandy Bridge has no USB 3.0 support, however according to Graham Tucker, this was largely due to the fact that the USB 3.0 specification was not finalised when Sandy Bridge was being designed. Either way this situation is easily remedied on desktop PCs using an external USB 3.0 controller.

Performance, video and other good stuff

Intel have also thoughtfully baked their real-time overclocking technology into Sandy Bridge with what they call Turbo Boost 2. Knight Rider-like branding aside, Turbo Boost 2 allows Sandy Bridge powered PCs to intelligently overclock each processor core based on processing load.

While Turbo Boost 2 technology isn't anything new, Intel have extended it to the graphics processor, which will significantly improve graphics performance and be a huge boon for laptop gamers.

With a growing number of people using iPods and other portable gadgets to watch video, Intel are also hoping that what they've branded Quick Sync will also add to Sandy Bridge's appeal. By offloading chores such as video re-encoding onto the graphics processor, Sandy Bridge can handle video chores such as re-encoding video formats as deftly as dedicated (and more expensive) video hardware. Intel are also making Quick Sync APIs available to developers to give them access to the Sandy bridge's graphics hardware.

Last but by no means least on the video front, Intel have also incorporated what they call Wireless Display into Sandy Bridge which can stream HD video to Wireless Display compatible displays (several third party vendors such as Buffalo and DLink also demonstrated wireless display receiver boxes recently at CES for screens that don't support Wireless Display technology).

Where other wireless video streaming solutions have traditionally relied on Wi-Fi, Wireless Display operates independent of wireless routers, significantly reducing the complexities associated with getting most AV setups up and running.

Chip controversy

Sandy Bridge hasn't been without its issues either, having attracted a none too significant amount of attention when a flaw in its SATA disk controller became apparent. To their credit, Intel were extremely responsive, offering refunds on faulty chips. According to Intel, the issue only applies to SATA ports 3 and 5, and as most PCs only use one or two ATA drives, the issue is unlikely to rear its head. Intel have also addressed the fault in subsequent Sandy Bridge iterations, with revision B3 onwards fixing this bug.

Intel's move to incorporate basic copyright protection measures called "Intel Insider" that unlocks HD movies from online streaming services into Sandy Bridge hardware has also seen them coming under fire. Intel Insider technology works by establishing an encrypted and secure connection between streaming services and Sandy Bridge-equipped PCs.

Intel reiterated that Insider was never intended to be a digital rights management technology, and as such won't restrict the playback of most existing video content. Studios do however want to protect premium content, and they are wary of streaming it to PCs, which they see as being insecure allowing movies to be copied and shared over the peer-to-peer services. By embedding a secure layer into the PC at a hardware level, Intel hopes to provide a level of trust that will video content to the PC.



Verdict

There's a whole lot to like about Sandy Bridge. Not only can it run on the smell of an oily rag, it but also manages to deliver absolutely stonking performance thanks to its four cores, hyper threading and turbo boost goodies. Throw in a dedicated graphics processor on the same silicon as well as the ability to wirelessly stream video and the next crop of PCs start to look decidedly tasty to a wide range of potential buyers.

Sandy Bridge requires a new motherboard as its incompatible with existing CPU sockets and chipsets, so upgraders wanting move from an existing PC will need at the very minimum a new motherboard, and the latest DDR3 memory, which translates to more money being spent on upgrading, however on a bang per buck basis it'll be pretty hard to go past.