Hype around Intel's Core 2 Duo Processor - Core 2 Duo Processors

AMD’s Athlon was the first to release dual core processors for the desktop, but Intel countered it by introducing the Core 2 Duo processor which was also called Conroe. During the months preceding its release Intel kept the general public in a guessing game as to what Intel would finally unleash. Would it be able to surpass the performance bench marks set by the rival AMD Athlon processor? Nobody had the answers till Intel officially announce the release of the processor.

Intel processors date back to the 1980 when it introduces the 8086 processors. The story continued with processor power doubling almost every alternate year. The Pentium was first revealed in 1993 and served the company well till the introduction of this new technology Core 2 Duo processor. With the release of the Core 2 Duo Intel closed down its NetBurst micro architecture line of processors. The desktop and the mobile processors which were earlier a different line of products, were again merged together with the Core 2 Duo line of processors. The Core 2 Duo processors are inherently faster than its predecessors by over 40% with reduction in power consumption by over 40%. The speed and power saving is achieved by use of Smart cache technology which is combined with Wide Dynamic Execution techniques. Intel has developed the Smart Cache technology which is quite effective in apportioning the amount of cache memory as needed by the execution core. The net result is the optimum use of the cache by both the cores.

The Wide Dynamic Execution techniques used in the Core 2 Duo processors allows the execution of more instruction in a single clock cycle which improves the energy efficiency and execution time. The wider execution core allows execution of 4 instructions at a time simultaneously as the core has been widened by 33% when compared to its predecessors. The unlocked multiplier on the processors is a welcome measure by most gamers and high end users who like to extract every ounce of performance from the processors. The current Core 2 Dup processor can be over clocked upto 3.4 GHz, the speed which is yet to be matched by the rivals, using the standard cooling fan and heat sink which comes with the processor.

The Core 2 Duo has left the best of AMD processors gasping for air. The X8600 version f Core 2 Duo processors  have left behind the AMD processors by a margin of over 35% in most gaming and multimedia benchmarks. The smaller die and the volume production by Intel at cheaper costs has allowed Intel to play the processor market game with AMD at its own terms as not only the processors are better than the AMD processors they are cheaper than the earlier Pentium processors. The Core 2 Duo processors are backward compatible with most of the hardware except some of the motherboard which require a change. The software support is provided by the release of the 64 bit computing environment by Microsoft Windows Vista. It’s the number game and Intel is master of the numbers in the processors Market. In the meanwhile Intel has already laid down the road map for Quad Core processors which are currently available only for servers to reach the desktops very soon.