The Core 2 is a processor that Intel has build from scratch. Experience and design from other processors have been used, but this is more than just an expanse on the Pentium M processor. Originally the codename for the Core 2 was Merom. The goal was to create a processor without the power wattage problem the Pentium4 had. The Pentium4 suffered from an unexpected case of electrical leakage and this mean that more power was being used and more heat was being develop and therefore it was impossible for the Pentium4 to reach the clock frequencies Intel had planned for.
The expectations for the transferring from 130nm to 90nm and to 65nm was for the leakage problem to diminish accordingly, but this never happened. Intel realized that the frequencies could not be reached with the production capabilities they had. The solution was to go the AMD way - do more per clock cycle instead of increasing the number of clock cycles.
How wide is wide?
Time has brought new transistor technologies to the production and although the increase in clock frequency has not been what had been hoped for, they have had another huge advantage. The number of transistors you, economically speaking, can afford to put into af processor has gone up dramatically. With the Pentium4 this was primarily used to increase the L2 cache. But with the completely new Core 2 processor, Intel decided to do something more useful - use the extra transistors to do active calculations. So basically do more instead of doing things faster.
The transistor budget has allowed the Merom to have more of everything: Calculation units, branch prediction units and more transistors used for advanced control and optimization of the processor itself. The result is the widest Out-of-order-execution processor on the x86 market.
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