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Details of New Intel Dunnington and Nehalem Architectures Leaked
Posted by
ScuttleMonkey
on Mon Feb 25, 2008 02:47 PM
from the aren't-leaks-just-more-effective-pr-these-days dept.
from the aren't-leaks-just-more-effective-pr-these-days dept.
Daily Tech is reporting that details about Intel's new processor models were leaked over the weekend. Both the six core Dunnington and Nehalem architectures were featured in this leak. "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. [...] Nehalem is everything Penryn is -- 45nm, SSE4, quad-core -- and then some. For starters, Intel will abandon the front-side bus model in favor of QuickPath Interconnect; a serial bus similar to HyperTransport."
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Dunnington and Nehalem? (Score:5, Funny)
Sir Dunnington against the evil lich lord Nehalem!
Re:Dunnington and Nehalem? (Score:5, Informative)
Parent
Wow (Score:5, Funny)
http://www.theonion.com/content/node/33930 [theonion.com]
/I'm just waiting for the day Intel says "this one goes to 11"
Re:Wow (Score:4, Interesting)
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Re:Wow (Score:4, Insightful)
This is great for many computing environments, but my home system is not one of them. Honestly there isn't much software I use on a regular basis that really taxes the second core, let alone six of them.
Parent
Re:Wow (Score:4)
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Re:Wow (Score:5, Informative)
In order to spike both cores, I need to start something like a compiler or video encoder, which is going to also eat I/O time. Its the I/O that slows down WoW more then the CPU usage. Since adding four more cores drastically increases my parallel processing power (which I don't need more of now), and doesn't do a thing for my I/O throughput (which I do need more of), its not really all that helpful.
Thats why this doesn't excite me a whole lot. We were already at a spot where a single core is more then fast enough for a majority of mainstream users, and now we're going to give out six of them? Other then being able to run spyware more effeciently, whats actually being gained?
(There are people who will benefit from this type of thing, of course. I just don't see the mainstream market as part of that group.)
Parent
Re:Wow (Score:4, Interesting)
Parent
Re:Wow (Score:4, Interesting)
For the cache, the matter is simple. If you can fit 12 MB, but not 16, then 12 is still better than 8. You build them in 3 units of 4 MB each, so no big deal.
Parent
Re:Wow (Score:4, Informative)
Not sure about Intel, but in AMD's case, it was cost recovery for quad core chips where one core had a defect. They just zap that one so it doesn't show up and sell a perfectly good 3 core chip.
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It's from the book of Armaments (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Wow (Score:5, Funny)
Note how they called the it the (Pent)ium II instead of the (Sex)ium processor.
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QuickPath vs HyperTransport (Score:5, Interesting)
Imagine a Beowulf of those
Re:QuickPath vs HyperTransport (Score:4, Informative)
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Re:QuickPath vs HyperTransport (Score:4, Informative)
One of the most impressive things about Quickpath is its self-calibration circuit. Makes making PCB's a lot easier and variations easier to deal with.
Parent
But... (Score:5, Funny)
Intel still playing the Chuck Norris of vendors... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Intel still playing the Chuck Norris of vendors (Score:5, Interesting)
I don't really know the situation surrounding the technology, but even if Intel could use it for free, they would lose a huge battle in the PR War. I can see it now, "Remember that interconnect AMD has been using for years now? Well our design has finally caught up with theirs enough to use it." Remember that to the masses, the non-slashdot crowd, they have no idea what the techno-jargon spouted by Intel marketing means.
Intel currently has the superior technology, this is because of superior fabrication capabilities, not because of a superior architecture, if I've been following this correctly over the last few years. The general public is oblivious to the fact that internally the AMD architecture is cleaner and more elegant, the only thing they have to go on is marketing. If Intel were to adopt HyperTransport, which IIRC is trademarked by AMD, that would be a huge step backwards for Intel marketing, which is just recovering now that the Core 2 architecture has put them back on top.
Parent
Re:Intel still playing the Chuck Norris of vendors (Score:4, Informative)
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Welll.... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:6 cores times 3MB = 16MB? (Score:5, Informative)
Note: if you're tempted to mod this up, don't. I rehashed the summary.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re:6 cores times 3MB = 16MB? (Score:4, Informative)
It seems that 16 MB of L3 cache is shared among all 6 processors. Then, each pair of cores has 3 MB between them.
So, 16MB L3 + 3 (pairs of 2 cores) * 3MB L2 = 25 MB total cache.
Parent
Re:6 cores times 3MB = 16MB? (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:FSB (Score:5, Interesting)
Now, hopefully Intel will open the new bus to third party apps (like that FPGA opteron drop-in). I'll admit I'm an Intel fanboy, but I'd buy an opteron system in a heartbeat if I could pony up the $5K for that co-processor...
What surprises me is the current lack of complaints that you can't drop these new processors into an old board, as a new socket will be required (this is because the northbridge is rolling into the CPU IIRC). I don't see it as a big deal, because usually when upgrading the CPU one also is upgrading the memory and MB as well.
-nB
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