Westmere: A family of 32nm IA processors

Abstract

The Westmere processor is implemented on a high-к metal-gate 32nm process technology [1] as a compaction of the Nehalem processor family [2]. Figure 5.1.1 shows the 6-core dual-socket server processor and the 2-core single-socket processor for mainstream client. This paper focuses on innovations and circuit optimizations made to the 6-core processor. The 6-core design has 1.17B transistors including the 12MB shared L3 Cache and fits in approximately the same die area as its 45nm 4-core 8MB-L3-cache Nehalem counterpart. The core supports new instructions for accelerating encryption/decryption algorithms, speeds up performance under virtualized environments, and contains a host of other targeted performance features.