Ivy Bridge

A 22nm update to Sandy Bridge, scheduled for release in late 2012. This will be the first chip to feature Intel's new "FinFET" trigate nonplanar transistor technology. Its Panther Point chipset is expected to support PCIe 3.0, while the IGD will add DirectX 11 and OpenCL 1.1 support. Ivy Bridge is expected to continue making use of the LGA1155 socket interface introduced with Sandy Bridge.

Architecture

• The RDRAND instruction is made available on Ivy Bridge processors containing Bull Mountain hardware.
• Supervisory Mode Execution Protection (SMEP) prohibits ring 0 code from executing memory writable by other rings

Microarchitecture

Microarchitecture is expected to be similar to that of Sandy Bridge.

Processor Support

Ivy Bridge will introduce the "Panther Point" 7-series PCH (Platform Controller Hub), and the second-tier "Patsburg" X79 (this latter will use DMI rather than QPI). Native USB 3.0 and PCIe 3.0 support is expected on-chip.

See Also

• "Inside the Intel Ivy Bridge Microarchitecture" at www.hardwaresecrets.com