Associate
Despite being based on an architecture designed to hit high clock speeds, Pentium 4 and Pentium D processors never made it past the 4GHz barrier. However, Intel will finally go past the magic number in 2008. The report says Bloomfield, one of Intel's upcoming 45nm quad-core processors based on the Nehalem architecture, will be clocked at speeds exceeding 4GHz when it comes out in 2008. The chip will have 8MB of shared L2 cache, simultaneous multi-threading (the ability to execute two threads per core,) support for Intel's Common System Interface, and an integrated memory controller. Bloomfield will slip into new B sockets—land grid arrays with 1,366 pins instead of the 775 in Intel's current desktop LGA socket.