Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD)

[alan81]

What makes you believe this:
if any it would be more appropriate to compare it to Northwood --> Prescott.
Based on both transistor count, and what Intel has said, Penryn is a shrink of Conroe, but with a larger L2. That is exactly the relationship between northwood and williamette. OTOH, prescott had a significantly longer pipeline than northwood, making it a brand new design.
I think all the new features that are in Penryn (whatever they turn out to be) are in the existing conroe design, but not yet validated or functioning in current silicon. There are just not enough transistors available to have changed the design... and that is consistent with what Intel has said.
For the record, I think the first Penryn parts will be packaged as quad core, run at 3.00Ghz, be around 80W TDP, and average around 3% better IPC than conroe. We will see.
--Alan