Intel's new chip family: Core Microarchitecture | CNET News.com

Intel's new chip family: Core Microarchitecture | CNET News.com: "Core Microarchitecture features
Rattner touted a list of improvements coming with the new chip design.
� Intel Wide Dynamic Execution, which lets as many as four instructions be executed in a single tick of a chip's clock. In addition, a feature called macrofusion automatically combines two high-level chip instructions, in some cases into a single instruction.
� The Digital Media Boost means all 'SSE' instructions can execute in a single clock tick. SSE stands for streaming SIMD (single instruction, multiple data) extensions and speeds several operations such as video decoding or digital photo processing.
� Intel Advanced Smart Cache improves how high-speed cache memory is shared by multiple processor cores. For example, it lets one core control the whole cache when the other core is idle, and for other times, it governs how the same data can be shared by both cores, Rattner said.
� Intel Smart Memory Access is an improved set of algorithms that can predict what data should be 'prefetched' from main memory into faster cache memory so it's at hand when the processor needs it, he said.
� And Intel Intelligent Power Capability 'lets us shut down portions of the chip that aren't needed at a particular time to support instruction execution,' Rattner said. "