6-core Intel processors

[Merlin]

http://www.neowin.net/news/main/08/02/26/sun-leaks-6-core-intel-processor-details


Late last month in Austria, Intel (http://www.neowin.net/news/main/08/02/26/sun-leaks-6-core-intel-processor-details#) presented Sun with roadmaps discussing details of its upcoming server (http://www.neowin.net/news/main/08/02/26/sun-leaks-6-core-intel-processor-details#) platforms, including the fairly secret Xeon Dunnington and Nehalem architectures. Unfortunately for some, this presentation ended up on Sun's public web server over the weekend.

Dunnington, Intel's 45nm six-core Xeon processor (http://www.neowin.net/news/main/08/02/26/sun-leaks-6-core-intel-processor-details#) from the Penryn family, will succeed the Xeon Tigerton processor. Whereas Tigerton is essentially two 65nm Core 2 (http://www.neowin.net/news/main/08/02/26/sun-leaks-6-core-intel-processor-details#) Duo processors fused on one package, Dunnington will be Intel's first Core 2 Duo processor with three dual-core banks. :eek: Dunnington includes 16MB of L3 cache shared by all six processors. Each pair of cores can also access 3MB of local L2 cache. The end result is a design very similar to the AMD Barcelona quad-core processor; however, each Barcelona core contains 512KB L2 cache, whereas Dunnington cores share L2 cache in pairs.

To sweeten the deal, all Dunnington processors (http://www.neowin.net/news/main/08/02/26/sun-leaks-6-core-intel-processor-details#) will be pin-compatible with Intel Tigerton processors, and work with the existing Clarksboro chipset. Intel's slide claims this processor will launch in the second half of 2008 -- a figure consistent with previous roadmaps from the company.

[Blazedremedy]

Pretty cool, I was reading that they will be releaseing 8cores by the end of 2008. Crazyness.

[werty316]

Forget the MHz war, let core war begin :D

[sbrehm72255]

I think that's what its going to come down to in the end, same with GPU's I think.

[Merlin]

Pretty cool, I was reading that they will be releaseing 8cores by the end of 2008. Crazyness.
The year 2025

And Cores hanging out of the case,,,,,then began the Cold Core Wars

:techgage::techgage: Merlin :techgage::techgage:

[Kougar]

Anyone that's been keeping up with Intel's Larabee will know this to be true!

Of course Larabee only uses basic IA cores, but it'll be using an army of them...

[sbrehm72255]

The more cores the better I say........;) . As long as there's software to take advantage of them that is...............:)

[Kougar]

Think Larabee this way... each core is a highly advanced shader engine. As Nvidia shaders verses ATI shaders have pointed out, not all shaders are created equal...

Don't need overly fancy code to use an army of IA cores as fully programable shaders, however I just couldn't figure out how Intel will turn a much smaller number of IA processing cores to do the workload of a much, much larger number of shader units, like a 8800GTX card has. In all honesty their idea looks far more appropriate for Ray Tracing based graphcis than rastorized based graphics, which I guess was intentional...

[James Crysis]

Do you know what kind of clock speeds they are going to be released at?

[Merlin]

Think Larabee this way... each core is a highly advanced shader engine. As Nvidia shaders verses ATI shaders have pointed out, not all shaders are created equal...

Don't need overly fancy code to use an army of IA cores as fully programable shaders, however I just couldn't figure out how Intel will turn a much smaller number of IA processing cores to do the workload of a much, much larger number of shader units, like a 8800GTX card has. In all honesty their idea looks far more appropriate for Ray Tracing based graphcis than rastorized based graphics, which I guess was intentional...
Seems like they would need a controler also for each core......many pipelines..........I think the best idea was to combine them and increase the pipelines

:techgage::techgage: Merlin :techgage::techgage:

[Rob Williams]

Pretty cool, I was reading that they will be releaseing 8cores by the end of 2008. Crazyness.

I have no doubts we'll see Octal-Cores by year end, but I'm sure they will be based on the current-gen Penryn instead of the new Nehalem. I don't think we'll see an Octal-Core offering of that until Spring 2009.

Am I wrong, or lame in saying this thread has gone hardcore?

:-(

[Kougar]

Rob, definitely lame . ;)

Hard details on Larrabee are still scarce, the chip won't be seen until 2010 at least. Photo on this page probably best explains it http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080318-what-chips-may-comeintel-lifts-curtain-on-upcoming-cpus.html

[Rob Williams]

I found another site (http://techgage.com/article/intel_details_nehalem_dunnington_tukwila_larrabee/3) that has that picture also :-)

And yes, I am lame. At least I admit it!

[Kougar]

I found another site (http://techgage.com/article/intel_details_nehalem_dunnington_tukwila_larrabee/3) that has that picture also :-)

Oops! :o

[CoolZone]

Its a shame the 6 core cpus will launch for server environment only

[Merlin]

Its a shame the 6 core cpus will launch for server environment only
Well..... I think that is why they were concieved.
Think of a bank, serving 500 customers with only 2 teller windows open, 4 tellers, 6 tellers......the more cores the more they can service the customer.
It wouldn't help gamers at all....2 cores are all you really need, maybe 4 in the future.

:techgage::techgage: Merlin :techgage::techgage: