A Closer Look at the Sandy Bridge Die

Aside from a stack of Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups, I snagged something else of interest at my Intel meeting at CES 2011: a shot of some exposed Sandy Bridge processor die. As a recap SNB is available in three different physical die versions today: quad-core, dual-core with GT1 graphics and dual-core with GT2 graphics. The die sizes and transistor counts are below:




CPU Specification Comparison



CPU

Manufacturing Process

Cores

Transistor Count

Die Size



AMD Thuban 6C

45nm

6

904M

346mm2



AMD Deneb 4C

45nm

4

758M

258mm2



Intel Gulftown 6C

32nm

6

1.17B

240mm2



Intel Nehalem/Bloomfield 4C

45nm

4

731M

263mm2



Intel Sandy Bridge 4C

32nm

4

995M

216mm2



Intel Lynnfield 4C

45nm

4

774M

296mm2



Intel Clarkdale 2C

32nm

2

384M

81mm2



Intel Sandy Bridge 2C (GT1)

32nm

2

504M

131mm2



Intel Sandy Bridge 2C (GT2)

32nm

2

624M

149mm2




Now for the shot:





From left to right we have a dual-core GT2 die, a quad-core die and a 32nm Arrandale die with on-package 45nm HD Graphics GPU. There’s very little difference between the dual-core GT2 die and the quad-core die - each SNB core is fairly small at 32nm.





The comparison to Arrandale is also interesting as it makes dual-core SNB look pretty sensible. But keep in mind that we don’t know the full cost structure for manufacturing at 45nm vs. 32nm. Newer processes tend to be more expensive initially compared to older, more mature processes.
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