Sandy Bridge


Sandy Bridge is the codename for the microarchitecture used in the "second generation" of the Intel Core processors - the Sandy Bridge microarchitecture is the successor to Nehalem microarchitecture. Intel demonstrated a Sandy Bridge processor in 2009, and released first products based on the architecture in January 2011 under the Core brand.
Sandy Bridge is manufactured in the 32 nanometer process and has a soldered contact with the die and IHS, while Intel's subsequent generation Ivy Bridge uses a 22 nanometer die shrink and a TIM between the die and the IHS. This is known as the tick–tock model.
A Core i7 2600 Sandy Bridge CPU at 3.4 GHz with 1333 MHz DDR3 memory reaches 83 GFLOPS performance in the Whetstone benchmark and 118,000 MIPS in the Dhrystone benchmark.
It is the last Intel microarchitecture for which Windows Vista driver support officially exists.

Technology

Intel demonstrated a Sandy Bridge processor with A1 stepping at 2 GHz during the Intel Developer Forum in September 2009.
Upgraded features from Nehalem include:
All Sandy Bridge processors with one, two, or four cores report the same CPUID model 0206A7h and are closely related. The stepping number can not be seen from the CPUID but only from the PCI configuration space. The later Sandy Bridge-E processors with up to eight cores and no graphics are using CPUIDs 0206D6h and 0206D7h. Ivy Bridge CPUs all have CPUID 0306A9h to date, and are built in four different configurations differing in the number of cores, L3 cache and GPU execution units.
Die codenameCPUIDStep-
ping		Die size

Transistors

CoresGPU
EUs		L3
cache		Sockets
Sandy Bridge-HE-40206A7hD221611604128 MBLGA 1155, Socket G2,
BGA-1023, BGA-1224
Sandy Bridge-H-20206A7hJ11496242124 MBLGA 1155, Socket G2,
BGA-1023
Sandy Bridge-M-20206A7hQ0131504263 MBLGA 1155, Socket G2,
BGA-1023
Sandy Bridge-EP-80206D6hC141622708none20 MBLGA 2011
Sandy Bridge-EP-80206D7hC241622708none20 MBLGA 2011
Sandy Bridge-EP-40206D6hM027012704none10 MBLGA 2011
Sandy Bridge-EP-40206D7hM127012704none10 MBLGA 2011

Performance

1Processors featuring Intel's HD 3000 graphics are set in bold. Other processors feature HD 2000 graphics, HD graphics or no graphics core.
Suffixes to denote:
NOTE: , , , and are actually of Sandy Bridge-E edition.

Server platform

Mobile platform

Suffixes to denote:
On 31 January 2011, Intel issued a recall on all 67-series motherboards due to a flaw in the Cougar Point Chipset. A hardware problem exists, in which the chipset's SATA II ports may fail over time, causing failure of connection to SATA devices, though data is not at risk. Intel claims that this problem will affect only 5% of users over 3 years; however, heavier I/O workloads can exacerbate the problem.
Intel stopped production of flawed B2 stepping chipsets and began producing B3 stepping chipsets with the silicon fix. Shipping of these new chipsets started on 14 February 2011 and Intel estimated full recovery volume in April 2011. Motherboard manufacturers and computer manufacturers stopped selling products that involved the flawed chipset and offered support for affected customers. Options ranged from swapping for B3 motherboards to product refunds.
Sandy Bridge processor sales were temporarily on hold, as one cannot use the CPU without a motherboard. However, processor release dates were not affected. After two weeks, Intel continued shipping some chipsets, but manufacturers had to agree to a set of terms that will prevent customers from encountering the bug.

Identifying chipset version

[BIOS]

Motherboard manufacturer websites should have instruction
about how to identify chipset stepping version using bios.

[Linux]

lshw produces this partial output :

  • -isa
description: ISA bridge
product: H61 Express Chipset Family LPC Controller
vendor: Intel Corporation
physical id: 1f
bus info: pci@0000:00:1f.0
version: 05
width: 32 bits
clock: 33MHz
capabilities: isa bus_master cap_list
configuration: driver=lpc_ich latency=0
resources: irq:0

above output says 'version: 05'. under 'pch device and revision identification' page 13, says '05h' is located under 'b3 rev id' so 'b3' is the chipset stepping version. Suffix "h" means hexadecimal so '05h' means 5.

Limitations

Overclocking

With Sandy Bridge, Intel has tied the speed of every bus to a single internal clock generator issuing the basic Base Clock. With CPUs being multiplier locked, the only way to overclock is to increase the BClk, which can be raised by only 5–7% without other hardware components failing. As a work around, Intel made available K/X-series processors, which feature unlocked multipliers; with a multiplier cap of 57 for Sandy Bridge. For the Sandy Bridge E platform, there is alternative method known as the BClk ratio overclock.
During IDF 2010, Intel demonstrated an unknown Sandy Bridge CPU running stably overclocked at 4.9 GHz on air cooling.

Chipset

Non-K edition CPUs can overclock up to four bins from its turbo multiplier. Refer here for chipset support.

vPro remote-control

Sandy and Ivy Bridge processors with vPro capability have security features that can remotely disable a PC or erase information from hard drives. This can be useful in the case of a lost or stolen PC. The commands can be received through 3G signals, Ethernet, or Internet connections. AES encryption acceleration will be available, which can be useful for video conferencing and VoIP applications.

Intel Insider

Sandy and Ivy Bridge processors contain a DRM technology that some video streaming web sites rely on to restrict use of their content. Such web sites offer 1080p streaming to users with such CPUs and downgrade the quality for other users.

Software development kit

With the introduction of the Sandy Bridge microarchitecture, Intel also introduced the Intel Data Plane Development Kit to help developers of communications applications take advantage of the platform in packet processing applications, and network processors.

Roadmap

Intel demonstrated the Haswell architecture in September 2011, released in 2013 as the successor to Sandy Bridge and Ivy Bridge with general availability in 2014.