Intel designs 45 nanometres wide processor ‘Penryn’

In an age of microchips, Intel and IBM have come up with another wonder, the 45 nm processors. It is a tiny giant in the sense that this new Intel processor microchip, which is half the size of a postage stamp, is capable of containing 400 million transistors in it.
The 45 nanometres (billionths of a metre) wide processor has been given the code name of ‘Penryn’. Penryn is similar to the current processors as regards its availability in dual-core and quad-core versions.
Specifications about Penryn have not yet been revealed by Intel in details, however, this could be known that Penryn will feature increased L2 cache size and Streaming SIMD4 (SSE4) extensions. This change, according to Intel has been effected to increase the speed of media applications. Though at this stage any other architectural enhancement is not known about, yet reports have it that some other thermal improvements have been made.
The 45 nanometres wide processor Penryn will enable to make the transistors become much smaller in size, which in turn would double the total number of transistors in a particular space. As regards the speed, it was claimed that Penryn will be 20 percent faster than its predecessor, which indirectly means increase of efficiency. Further, this processor will help to curb power leakage by at least 80 percent. So Penryn in a nutshell means a package of benefits.