Intel last week announced numerous new technologies that it will be including in its upcoming CPU range. Some of the technologies announced not only increase the actual performance of the chip, but are also geared to increase reliability, and, at the same time, decrease power consumption. Such technologies include Intel"s Demand Based Switching (DBS).

In keeping with Moore"s Law, Intel"s CPUs are becoming smaller and smaller, and, at the same time, the number of transistors is constantly doubling. However, as the number of transistors increases, so too does the amount of heat generated by the CPU.

"The secret here," comments Simon Muchmore, technical marketing engineer at the Intel Applications Development Center for the EMEA region at Intel, "is to find a way of optimizing power consumption without actually affecting CPU performance."

Thus Intel has released a technology called Demand Based Switching (DBS). "This technology is very similar to our age-old Intel Speed Step Technology, which automatically adjusts the CPU frequency or speed, according to the notebook"s battery status," says Muchmore.

"DBS is the same sort of technology, but for servers," he comments. "A server does not work off a battery, but there are times when the CPU is used to its full potential, and times when it is merely idling. DBS simply drops the CPU frequency when it is not in use, thereby reducing its power consumption."

According to Intel, DBS should lower a system"s power consumption by up to 25 percent. DBS has already been implemented in Intel"s new Xeon CPU line.

Muchmore also outlined the major differences between Intel"s hyper threading and dual-core technology.

According to him, with hyper threading, there is still only one processor, but the processor runs two separate registers or threads. With dual-core, however, a single processor contains two execution boards, thus providing greater performance over a chip with hyper threading.

Execute Disable bit (XD)

Intel"s XD technology is designed to prevent hackers from executing code in memory, thereby causing a buffer overflow attack.

XD technology was first introduced in 2001 and, according to the company, all Intel CPUs will now include the technology.

Intel also previewed its latest Itanium CPU, codenamed Montecito. According to the company, this dual core CPU is based on 90-nanometer process technology, contains 1.7 billion transistors, and will contain up to 24M bytes of L3 cache. "We will begin shipping Montecito in the second half of this year," concludes Muchmore.