Penryn

The successor to the Merom core currently used for the Core 2 Duo T5000/T7000 series mobile processors, code-named Penryn, debuted on the 45 nanometer process. Many details about Penryn appeared at the April 2007 Intel Developer Forum. Its successor is Nehalem.

Important advances[44] include the addition of new instructions including SSE4 (also known as Penryn New Instructions) and new fabrication materials; most significantly a hafnium-based high-k dielectric.

Penryn is paired with the 2007 desktop chipset series, Bearlake,[45] some of whose models include an increase in bus performance (connection to the northbridge, etc.) to 1333 MT/s and support for DDR3 SDRAM. In notebooks and other mobile equipment, Penryn pairs with the mobile chipset series Crestline, which does not support DDR3, although Intel believes[46] future DDR3 support will benefit mobile equipment's power- and heat-constrained environments.

Intel's new 45 nm Penryn-based Core 2 Duo and Core 2 Extreme processors were released on January 6, 2008. The new processors launch exclusively within a 35 W thermal envelope. Penryn has also been released for notebooks with companies such as HP beginning to offer the first model, the T9500, from late January 2008.[47] The T9500 offers a 2.6 GHz clock rate, higher than all but the Extreme Edition of the Merom range, and 6 MB (rather than 4 MB) of Level 2 Cache.

Intel released an Apple-only chip on April 28, 2008 that increased the clock rate to 3.06 GHz as well as increasing the Front Side Bus to 1066 MT/s, and changed the Cache to 6 MB shared L2.

The entry level Penryn is the T8xxx-Series, with only 3 MB Level 2 Cache and beginning with the T8100 at a clock rate of 2.1 GHz.