Intel Corp. on Monday revealed several significant design features for the company's 2011 next-generation processor family at the Intel Developer Forum. The new and enhanced features will further extend Intel's chip performance and battery life leadership, and add a number of visually related features built right into the chips.

"The way people and businesses are using computers is evolving at an explosive rate, fueling demand for an even more powerful and visually appealing experience. Our upcoming second  generation Intel Core processor family represents the biggest advance in computing performance and capabilities over any previous generation. In addition to offering these features inside Intel-based laptops, we plan to scale these advances across our server data center and embedded computing product portfolio," said Dadi Perlmutter, executive vice president and general manager of the Intel architecture group.

The processor family will include a new "ring" architecture that allows the built-in processor graphics engine to share resources such as cache with the processor's core to increase a device's computing and graphics performance while maintaining energy efficiency.

Sandy Bridge (SNB) processor also includes an enhanced version of Intel Turbo Boost technology. This feature automatically shifts or reallocates processor cores and processor graphics resources to accelerate performance, tailoring a workload to give users an immediate performance boost when needed.

Intel's new processor graphics delivers enhanced visual features focused on the areas where most users are computing today:  HD video, stereo-3D, mainstream gaming, multi-tasking and online socializing and multimedia. The graphics core fully supports DirectX 11 and other advanced graphics functionality.

The 2011 chips also come with Intel Advanced Vector Extensions (AVX). AVX delivers improved performance, rich functionality and the ability to better manage, rearrange and sort data. A new 256-bit instruction set accelerates floating point intensive applications such as digital photo editing and content creation.

Intel also demonstrated a dual processor, next-generation Intel Xeon processor server running Vidyo video conferencing software that utilizes the 32 threads available on the system, and takes advantage of the AES New Instructions set (AESNI). Next-generation Xeon processors for 2 socket servers and workstations run 8 cores and 16 threads per processor and are on schedule for production in the second half of 2011.

Desktops and laptops powered by Intel SNB family are expected to be available early next year.

Tags: Intel, 32nm, Core