Quote Originally Posted by Fuji View Post
how was penryn not designed for the high-k dielectric?

Based on tick-tock,

the process comes first and then a new architecture that is built on that process.
You've got it backwards. Penryn is a derivative of the Merom family. Merom was designed specifically for 65nm and Penryn is a "die shrink" with minor updates for the 45nm node. Nehalem is designed specifically for 45nm and Westmere is the derivative process shrink of Nehalem on 32nm. Similarly, Sandy Bridge is specifically designed for 32nm and so on and so forth.