IBM, Intel and AMD will take the stage at ISSCC 2011 conference and will talk about their efforts to develop high-performance, low-power processors, including a 5.2Ghz microprocessor chip, a 10-core Xeon and a dual-core Bulldozer processor running at 3.5+ GHz.

IBM will present a microprocessor chip for the IBM zEnterprise 196 system, which contains 4 processor cores running at 5.2GHz, and includes an on-chip high-speed 24MB shared DRAM L3 cache. To meet this high-frequency design objective, many challenges were met, including significant timing, power and noise problems which had to be resolved.

Intel will talk about a monolithic 10-core Xeon Processor designed in a 32nm 9M process with a shared L3 cache. Low power modes are introduced to cut idle power compared to the previous generation processor. A 2nd order CTLE and temperature compensation are implemented in the I/O receiver to enable link survivability even with low RX margins. Intel's core- and cache-recovery techniques maximize yield.

Intel will also describe a 32nm Itanium processor for mission-critical servers. The Itanium processor implemented in 32nm CMOS has 9 layers of Cu and contains 3.1 billion transistors. The processor's die measures 18.2?29.9mm2 and has 8 multi-threaded cores, a ring-based system interface and combined cache on the die is 50MB. High speed links allow for peak processor-toprocessor bandwidth of up to 128GB/s and memory bandwidth of up to 45GB/s, Intel says.

AMD will present design Solutions for its Bulldozer 32nm Soi 2-core processor. The Bulldozer 2-core CPU module contains 213M transistors in an 11-metal layer 32nm high-k metalgate SOI CMOS process and is designed to operate from 0.8 to 1.3V. This micro-architecture improves performance and frequency while reducing area and power over a previous AMD x86-64 CPU in the same process. The design reduces the number of gates/cycle relative to prior designs, achieving 3.5GHz+ operation in an area (including 2MB L2 cache) of 30.9mm2, AMD says.

In addition, AMD will present a 40-entry unified out-of-order scheduler and integer execution unit for the aMd Bulldozer x86-64 core. The 40-instruction out-of-order scheduler issues four operations per cycle and supports single-cycle operation wakeup. The integer execution unit supports single-cycle bypass between four functional units. AMD implemented critical paths without exotic circuit techniques or heavy reliance on full-custom design. AMD's architectural choices also minimize power consumption.

The 2011 IEEE International Solid-State Circuits Conference will be held on February 20-24, 2011, in the San Francisco, CA.