New Features of AMD’s 45-nm Shanghai Processor

New Features of AMD’s 45-nm ‘Shanghai’ Processorby Scott Ferguson

—45-nm with Immersion Lithography—Greater frequency compared with Quad-Core AMD Opteron

—AMD Memory Optimizer Technology—Enhanced pre-fetching 2x Core Probe Bandwidth compared with Quad-Core AMD Opteron

—AMD Balanced Smart Cache—8MB: Twice the total cache compared with Quad-Core AMD Opteron

—HyperTransport Technology 3.0—Level 1 up to 17.6GB per second (not available until the second quarter of 2009)

—45-nm with Immersion Lithography—35 percent lower idle power compared with Quad-Core AMD Opteron

—AMD Smart Fetch—Up to 21 percent CPU power savings

—Enhanced RVI—Faster world switch compared with Quad-Core AMD Opteron

—L3 Cache Index Disable—Superior data integrity

AMD has used a common platform for its x86 chips, from the quad-core “Barcelona” and “Shanghai” to the six-core “Istanbul” and “Sao Paulo” chips.