Intel's Mooly Eden just disclosed Ivy Bridge's transistor count to a captive audience at IDF this morning: 1.4 billion transistors. That's presumably for the quad-core version compared to 1.16B in Sandy Bridge. Don't pay attention to the die shot above, that's not an accurate representation of Ivy Bridge. Intel is holding off on showing the die until closer to launch. Why? Likely to avoid early disclosure of how much of the die is dedicated to the GPU. As you'll see in our Ivy Bridge architecture piece later today, the lion's share of those transistors are improvements in the GPU.
Update: Intel has provided us with updated numbers for both Ivy Bridge and Sandy Bridge. Transistor counts are only comparable when they're done the same way. Intel is saying that SNB is 1.16B and Ivy is 1.4B. The gap between these numbers is only 20%, which is much more in line with what we'd expect from a tick. I'm waiting on a response from Intel as to why the SNB number went up since launch.
Update 2: This is why 1.16B and 995M are both correct for Sandy Bridge.
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