Today marks the introduction of Intel’s new Ivy Bridge microarchitecture processors, and therefore the first time we’ll have the chance to take advantage of those all-new 3D Tri-gate transistors.
As well as the new transistors, Ivy Bridge sees Intel move to 22nm processor production, which automatically brings with it speed gains and energy savings. These will also be the first Intel chips to have built-in support for USB 3.0, PCI Express 3.0, as well as updated Intel HD Graphics supporting DirectX 11, OpenGL 3.1, and OpenCL 1.1. Playing back 4K video without an additional graphics card is promised, making 1080p YouTube streams child’s play for the new Core chips.
With the die shrink and Tri-gate transistors it is expected that Ivy Bridge will boost performance by as much as 20% while equally reducing power requirements by 20%. Looking specifically at GPU performance, the gains could be as high as 50% over the previous generation of HD Graphics.
What may surprise you is Intel won’t be rolling out the full range of Ivy Bridge processors today. Core i5 and Core i7 quad-core desktop chips will be available, but dual-core and mobile versions won’t be appearing until “later this spring.” That means for the time being we won’t be seeing an Ivy Bridge processor shipping inside an Ultrabook.
The official Ivy Bridge announcement is expected later today when reviews of the new chips should also start appearing. Keep an eye on ExtremeTech this afternoon for one of the first full reviews of the Ivy Bridge processors.
