Nehalem: Intel's near future gets real
Intel has scores of futuristic, potentially game-changing research projects but Nehalem is bet-the-farm reality. The first Nehalem chips--and the first drops of what should become a giant revenue stream--will arrive later this year. So, it is not surprising that real silicon and real systems are starting to appear.
What is Nehalem exactly? The architecture will scale from two to eight processor cores, have faster chip-to-chip communication (Intel calls this technology QuickPath), do a better job of adjusting performance levels to suit power needs, and have a higher level of integration (more logic will be built directly onto the processor die).
Other salient features include more scalable memory (each processor will have its own dedicated memory), the ability to do more stuff simultaneously (up to 16 threads with simultaneous multi-threading), and new instructions to increase efficiency (called SSE4.2 instructions). Here's how Intel describes Nehalem.
A four-socket Nehalem system with integrated memory controllers
(Credit: Intel)Maximum PC appears to be the first to build a Nehalem "Bloomfield" desktop system for everyone to see.
The system uses a 2.93GHz Bloomfield processor and an Intel motherboard with an X58 chipset (which had been codenamed "Tylersburg"), which will is also due to ship in the fourth quarter.
The Bloomfield chip is larger than current Intel quad-core processors (e.g., the Q6700), according to Maximum PC. This means more fans, bigger heat sinks, and more heat to dissipate overall.
Nehalem will support faster DDR3 memory. And this points to one of Nehalem's major departures from past Intel processors: the memory controller--which talks to the DDR3 chips--is now on the processor die. Previously, this was off-chip. In short, higher levels of integration generally means higher performance.
New "overclocking features" are also offered in Nehalem, according to Maximum PC. Overclocking--running the chip faster than its rated speed--is an absolute prerequisite for gamers. Which means, of course, that initially one of Nehalem's biggest draws will be gamers.
In the more distant Nehalem future, the mobile platform has gotten a name. At this point, Intel will confirm the code name only: Calpella. But otherwise "won't comment on speculation."
Other information posted on various tech Web sites about the 2009 Nehalem mobile platform in the past few days has been in the public domain for almost a year. That is, it will have an on-die memory controller and one version of the chip will have an integrated graphics processor--which will be a first for Intel. One new twist is the timing: it may launch in the third quarter of 2009.
Brooke Crothers has served as an editor at large at CNET News, an editor at Dow Jones' Asian Wall Street Journal Weekly, and a senior editor at InfoWorld. His CNET blog covers chip technology and computer systems, and how they define the computing experience. He also contributes to The New York Times' Bits and Technology sections. He is a member of the CNET Blog Network and is not an employee of CNET. Disclosure. Follow Brooke on Twitter @mbrookec. 
My name is Ann, my blog is http://happywoman50.blogspot.com/
- by fdunn3 August 8, 2008 5:26 PM PDT
- Nehalem is a funny name for an AMD Opteron Knock-off. This IS the Opteron architecture and one of the reasons it has been kicking Intel in the groin on systems with more the two physical CPUs.
- Like this Reply to this comment
-
-
- by notgonnatellya August 9, 2008 6:18 PM PDT
- Fdunn, I used AMD from roughly 2000 until the middle of last year, and while you're probably correct about Intel's unethical practices, they have little to do with why Intel is killing AMD right now.
- Like this
-
(5 Comments)But Intel will win in the end because it has suppressed AMD's market share illegally for more than 5 years now or about the same time that the Opteron and Athlon64 came out.
You remember the Athlon64 don't you? It's the CPU that Intel refused to build because they wanted the 64 bit market exclusively for the Itanium processor but when they saw how the Athlon64 was performing relative to the inefficient Pentium4 Intel changed their minds.
Just like they changed their minds about tying the Pentium4 exclusively to RAMBUS memory, you remember that don't you?
Or how Intel ditched it's best performer the PentiumIII because they knew the P4 architecture was better for streaming media due to it's long pipeline, the same one that made it inefficient so they went back to the PIII core and the rest is history.
Oh the Itanium, you can find it for sale on ebay.
The core2 architecture has outperformed AMD since day one, and AMD's Quad-Core approach made things even worse.
I want AMD to succeed, but they share most of the blame for their current situation. They got caught flat footed by Core 2, and after 2 years there's still nothing to compete with intel.
As a result, AMD is forced to compete on price and sell CPUs at a loss. Hopefully Fusion will change things, but we've been waiting a long time, and for the desktop, they're not there.
On the plus side, for the first time since they acquired ATI, they've released a solid GPU....just wish it'd been 6 months ago, when I finally relented and went with nVidia.