AMD Phenom II X4 920 Processor Review

Starting with the use of a 45 nanometre process, both Phenom II CPUs launched today have been manufactured on a 45nm process with silicon-on-insulator technology, giving all the usual benefits of such a die shrink such as a reduction in die size, power consumption and thus heat generated. What's more, AMD have made use of an immersion lithography manufacturing technology for these parts, making for an overall manufacturing process that AMD claims will serve them well not only for this particular architecture, but also for future CPU architectures and process changes, particularly as they look forward to 32 nanometre as their next big process jump. In the short term though, the immersion lithography technology showcased here is cited as one of the main reasons for AMD's ability to reach higher clock speeds, with tighter tolerances and lower leakages of current than previous parts - Considering the struggle first-generation Phenom parts had to even get close to 3.0GHz, this is very good news indeed, and AMD seem confident that these initial Phenom II processors have a lot of headroom to play with in overclocking terms.