A look at Intel's Turbo Boost technology

Intel introduced the new "Clarksfield" Core i7 Mobile processor at the Intel Developer Forum last week. One of its capabilities is called "Turbo Boost," which in itself introduces a different paradigm of operation. Rather than running at a fixed clock rate, Turbo Boost essentially manipulates it to ensure that the chip is working at its maximum capabilities where its Thermal Design Power (TDP) is concerned.

One example is integer calculations, which do not consume as much power as other operations. So when faced with a whole lot of integer number crunching, Turbo Boost will actually increase the frequency of all four cores of a quad-core processor to maximize performance.

When doing serious floating point computations however, the clock speeds of the various cores might be reined in to adhere with the TDP and protect the chip.

Don't mistake this technology for something similar to the consumer-level over clocking that is being practiced. In those cases, the chips are generally pushed beyond their specifications while the processors with Turbo Boost run squarely within its design specs. If anything, the proliferation of this technology is good news to green pundits, as it can only result in chips that run with higher efficiency.

For more on this story:
- check out this article at CNET News

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