Penryn is the next Core 2 with a die-shrink. It brings several performance improving features such as a larger and lower latency cache, SSE4, etc.

Knowing what’s running under the hood (or rather, ATX case ;)) of your computer is like knowing what engine your car is running. No doubt you’ll get through the day without giving a care whether your CPU is an Intel or AMD, whether or not it’s dual-core, if it’s VT friendly or run 64-bit code, but in the IT industry, a little extra knowledge can sometimes go a long way. Reading about CPUs has been a long hobby of mine, since high-school and it the habit has stuck with me throughout the years mostly because it’s sometimes relevant to my work. Yes, sourcing out the best performing CPU means I can run more software at the same time. And with the virtualization explosion in the software development field, more performance/watt and cores will help achieve the dream when a single developer laptop can run virtual machines to mimic the dreaded production environment. Well, if none of those are your concern, it still makes for a good weekend read.