The need for speed
Using a Clarksfield Core i7 Mobile Extreme processor - a quad-core part running at 2GHz - Eden used Turbo boost to speed up both PowerPoint and iTunes, noting "once you start using Turbo, you won't have the patience to open things like PowerPoint without it."
The principle is a fairly simple but ingenious one. When using fewer cores, transistors built into the chip simply disconnect unnecessary items from the power bus. However, if one should want to run a program which requires bigger push on a single thread, the connected core is automatically pumped up with extra voltage to overclock it for a short period until the job is done. In other words, Turbo can decide when to increase system responsiveness and when to bring things back to idle.
A good analogy, said Eden, was owning a car. Most people don't use their cars for more than two hours a day, he explained, meaning it sits in a garage for the remaining 22 hours. This may well seem like a waste, but when needed, cars can take you exactly where you want to go, relatively quickly. "It's the same with Turbo," he declared.
Of course, consistently overclocking a machine can overheat the chip and render it useless fairly rapidly, so Intel has ensured that its Mobile Nehalem parts (codenamed Clarksfield) protect themselves through self monitoring and shutting down if temperature limits are breached.
