Buckle Up, Intel Preps 8-Core Nehalem-EX Chips for March Launch
What could you do with 8 physical cores of CPU processing power? Probably not a whole lot on the desktop front (save for you Folding@Home fanatics), but in the server sector, Intel's upcoming 8-core Nehalem-EX chip is pretty big news, and it's launching later this month, according to Intel Xeon Platform Director, Shannon Poulin.
The announcement puts to rest any worries that the 8-core part might be delayed, and makes good on a promise Intel made last year when the chip maker said it would release the chip in the first half of 2010.
To quickly recap, Nehalem-EX boasts an extensive feature-set, including:
Like AMD's 12-core Opteron server CPUs -- codenamed Magney-Cours -- Intel's Nehalem-EX architecture offers four memory channels per processor. Nehalem-EX will offer up to nine times the memory bandwidth of the previous generation Intel Xeon 7400 platform, a pretty impressive leap.
The announcement puts to rest any worries that the 8-core part might be delayed, and makes good on a promise Intel made last year when the chip maker said it would release the chip in the first half of 2010.
To quickly recap, Nehalem-EX boasts an extensive feature-set, including:
- Intel Nehalem Architecture buil on Intel's unique 45nm high-k metal gate technology process
- Up to 8 cores per processor
- Up to 16 threads per processor with Intel Hyper-threading
- Scalability up to eight sockets via Quick Path Interconnects and greater with third-party node controllers
- QuickPath Architecture with four high-bandwidth links
- 24MB of shared cache
- Integrated memory controllers
- Intel Turbo Boost Technology
- Intel scalable memory buffer and scalable memory interconnects
- Up to 9x the memory bandwidth of previous generation
- Support for up to 16 memory slots per processor socket
- Advanced RAS capabilities including MCA Recovery
- 2.3 billion transistors
Like AMD's 12-core Opteron server CPUs -- codenamed Magney-Cours -- Intel's Nehalem-EX architecture offers four memory channels per processor. Nehalem-EX will offer up to nine times the memory bandwidth of the previous generation Intel Xeon 7400 platform, a pretty impressive leap.
