Our buddy Ian Cutress at Anandtech has just penned an interesting article that considers the ten year anniversary of the Intel Conroe architecture and the launch of its Core 2 Duo series of 64-bit processors. The launch is clearly a mark in the sand in terms of CPU design, manufacturing and the concept of Moores Law which today, looks almost done and dusted. Ian takes a look back at Conroe and the landmark technologies that mad it such a game changer back in 2006, as well as a look into what the future of x86 computing looks like:

“Today marks a full 10 years since the first Core 2 Duo processors, and hence Intel’s 64-bit Core microarchitecture, were made officially available at retail. These included a number of popular dual-core processor parts, including the seemingly ubiquitous E6400 and the Core 2 Extreme X6800. These were built on Intel’s 65nm process, and marked a turning point in the desktop processor ecosystem. To quote Anand in our launch review: ‘you’re looking at the most impressive piece of silicon the world has ever seen’.”

“For a number of our readers, the launch of Conroe was a vast change in the processing landscape. The family of Netburst, Northwood and Prescott processors, in the form of Pentium D and Pentium 4, showed that pursuing the frequency race pushed the silicon far outside its efficiency zone and left a hot, power hungry mess in its wake. It didn’t even come with a muscular V8 sound, and AMD’s Athlon 64 X2 line had taken both the performance and efficiency crown.”

Read the full article here on Anandtech.