Can Eight Processors Fit Inside A CPU Package?
What are the characteristics that define a modern CPU? It is not sheer power any more? A Pentium D 805 dual core is still a power hog, even if it can run at 4.1 GHz and is truly smokin’ with an utterly monstrous clock rate. More important is power consumption: Intel wants to stay within the 130-W power envelope with the quadruple Core 2 Quadro processor. The 130-W figure was almost achieved by the Pentium Extreme Edition 965 and the Core 2 Quadro processor does it again; but it packs a total of four CPU cores on the chip now. The four cores are not located on a single piece of silicon, but the two Core 2 chips are placed next to each other inside the processor package. Consequently, the transistor count doubles to an impressive 582 million. We had to do the math as well: More than two Core 2 “Conroe” units do not fit in the existing LGA 775 casing, as the surface is simply not large enough. With a surface area of 143 mm2 per Core 2 dual core, at least 572 mm2 would be required to fit f
