Intel Centrino Duo Processor Technology and Intel Centrino Pro Processor Technology Fact Sheet

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Next-Generation Components Improve Mobile Computing
Intel Core 2 Duo Processor
The Intel Core 2 Duo processor is Intel’s energy-efficient microprocessor that delivers
breakthrough mobile performance and responsiveness for demanding business users and
consumers alike who will see improved performance when running multiple intense applications
simultaneously and when running dual-core optimized applications.
Key new features of the latest Intel Core 2 Duo processor include:
• Power-Optimized 800MHz System Bus – Improved front side bus speed from the
previous-generation 667MHz system bus.
• Dynamic Front Side Bus Frequency Switching – Dynamically changes the bus clock
frequency and a reduction in core voltage, enabling the CPU to enter into a new lower
power active state called super low frequency mode, resulting in lower power
consumption.
• Longer Residency in Intel® Enhanced Deeper Sleep – Improved CPU and chipset
interaction to redirect snoop cycles so the CPU stays in deep C4 state longer, resulting in
lower power consumption while idle.
• Intel® Dynamic Acceleration – Improved performance for single-threaded applications.
Key architectural features of the Intel Core 2 microarchitecture include:
• Intel Wide Dynamic Execution:
o Wider – A full 4-wide super scalar pipeline that can fetch, decode, execute and
retire instructions at a sustained rate of four instructions-per-clock vs. three for the
Intel Core Duo processor.
o Deeper – Buffer sizes optimize the effective number of instructions in flight
relative to the pipeline, allowing the processor to look deeper into the program
flow to find instructions that can be executed in parallel.
o Faster – Efficiency optimized pipeline improves the architectural critical path for
a very short and efficient 14-stage pipeline, attributing to higher frequency while
delivering higher instructions-per-clock.
o Smarter – Macro fusion combines commonly used instruction sequences into a
single instruction for execution, reducing the internal resources required and
increasing the instructions-per-clock rate, thus enabling the retiring of five
instructions with the same work it would normally take to retire four.
• Intel® Intelligent Power Capability – A set of capabilities designed to reduce power
consumption and design requirements by managing the runtime power consumption of all
the processor’s execution cores. The result is excellent energy optimization, enabling
Intel Core microarchitecture to deliver more energy-efficient performance notebook PCs.
• Intel® Advanced Smart Cache – A multi-core optimized cache that significantly
reduces latency to frequently used data, thus improving performance and efficiency by
increasing the probability that each execution core of a multi-core processor can access
data from a higher-performance, more efficient cache subsystem.
• Intel® Smart Memory Access – Improves system performance by optimizing the use of
the available data bandwidth from the memory subsystem and hiding the latency of