A quick primer on Sandy Bridge @ Tech Report

IDF just finished up a few days ago and while the gathering is designed to help educate developers the media is often invited to report on the event, and in some cases dr00l over much of the new hardware.

Sandy Bridge is the code name for the next great processor platform designed to replace/enhance the Lynnfield/Clarkdale 1156pin processors.  Pricing, and naming schemes are still under NDA but the basic architecture has been released along with some basic performance metrics.

The first things to know about Sandy Bridge are that it's a chip built using Intel's high-speed 32-nm chip fabrication process, with initial variants expected to have four traditional CPU cores, an integrated graphics processor, cache, and a memory controller located together on the same piece of silicon. Intel essentially skipped building a quad-core processor at 32-nm, opting to accelerate the schedule for Sandy Bridge instead.

Always a good read over there at TR.  Also keep in mind that along with the release of Sandy Bridge we'll be getting a new chipset called the P67 and an entirely new cycle of motherboard designs.

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