What You Need To Know About a Dual Core Processor

Introduction

The processor dual core was launched by Intel during the years 2006 to 2009. The main aim behind their production was to provide people with better processing performance at a cheaper price. The processor dual core is mainly featured in the desktops or mobile computers. On a technical front, they are described as being below Core and Core2 processors, but higher than Celeron. The launch was done as a step to re-inject Pentium in the market. The code names used for this product included Allendale, Wolfdale, Yonah, Merom and Penryn. Generally these code names were associated with the machines they were being used in.

History

It was in 2006 that Intel decided to reinvent the trademark of Pentium. They did this with the launch of processor dual core. The micro-architecture of these processors was cost effective and served as an efficient marketing plan too. The predecessors of processor dual core were Pentium M and Pentium D. Intel had initially wanted to launch processors with single core functionality. However, the problem with this approach was that the cache appeared not to be greater than the Celerons family. This approach led to the creation of the dual core processor, with a better processing speed. Initially, the computers with processor dual core had carried the name Pentium Dual Core, but later in 2009, it was reverted to Pentium.

Features

The predecessor of processor dual core was Pentium D, which had a Net Burst micro-architecture. In case of dual core, the basis was core micro-architecture. The recent processors like Core 2 Duo have a shared cache of 2 to 4 MiB as compared to 1 or 2 of Dual core processors. Pentium D didn’t have the shared cache option but had 2 or 4 MiB of non shared cache. Four different core names were used for the processors which were used in either mobile or desktop computers. The names were Yonah, Merom-2M, Allendale and Wolfdale-3M. Yonah was frequently featured in notebooks that appeared in 2007. Allendale, on the other hand, was essentially a part of desktop computers. The main feature in both of them was that the processors were very much overclockable, meaning that they were designed for better performance than Pentium D and M. Merom-2M can be described as a mobile version of Allendale and was also introduced in 2007. Wolfdale-3M was remarkable in the sense that it could overclock as high as 6 GHz. This was achieved with the help of liquid nitrogen based cooling. A later release was the Penryn-3M and is described as a successor of the Merom Core.

Comments

Most Recent Articles