Intel Details Nehalem CPU and Larrabee GPU

Vigile writes "Intel previewed the information set to be released at IDF next month including details on a wide array of technology for server, workstation, desktop and graphics chips. The upcoming Tukwila chip will replace the current Itanium lineup with about twice the performance at a cost of 2 billion transistors and Dunnington is a hexa-core processor using existing Core 2 architecture. Details of Nehalem, Intel's next desktop CPU core that includes an integrated memory controller, show a return of HyperThreading-like SMT, a new SSE 4.2 extension and modular design that features optional integrated graphics on the CPU as well. Could Intel beat AMD in its own "Fusion" plans? Finally, Larrabee, the GPU technology Intel is building, was verified to support OpenGL and DirectX upon release and Intel provided information on a new extension called Advanced Vector Extension (AVX) for SSE that would improve graphics performance on the many-core architecture."

Re:Nehalem? Larrabee?

[TechyImmigrant]

They are code names, not product names.

Intel has a rich collection of silly code names.

Re:Gflargen and Blackeblae

[iknownuttin]

Haven't they heard of numbers?

You can't trademark numbers. When AMD started releasing "x86" numbered processors, Intel filed suit and lost. The judge stated that you can't trademark numbers. It's such an old case, this is what I found in the last 10 minutes regarding Intel and trademarking numbers [theinquirer.net].

I'm tired and too lazy to find the actual lawsuit.

Re:Nehalem? Larrabee?

[Have Blue]

Most of Intel's codenames are names of real places [wikipedia.org].

Re:Nehalem? Larrabee?

[Anonymous Coward]

This is what it's named after: http://www.oregonstateparks.org/park_201.php [oregonstateparks.org]

Someone even wrote a song about the place: http://www.google.com/search?q=everclear+Nehalem [google.com]

Re:Nehalem? Larrabee?

[glitch23]

They typically (maybe all) come from various types of things (e.g. mountains [mckinley]) in the north west portion of North America. You'll notice many sound the same such as Tukwila and Willamette.

Re:Why the brick wall?

[djohnsto]

Because power generally increases at a rate of frequency^3 (that's cubed). Adding more cores generally increases power linearly.

For example. Let's start with a single-core Core 2 @ 2GHz. Let's say it uses 10 W (not sure what the actual number is).

Running it at twice the frequency results in a (2^3) = 8X power increase. So, we can either have a single-core 4 GHz Core 2 at 80W, or we can have a quad-core 2GHz Core 2 at 40W. Which one makes more sense?

Re:Why the brick wall?

[TheSync]

1) We've hit the "Power Wall", power is expensive, but transistors are "free". That is, we can put more transistors on a chip than we have the power to turn on.

2) We also have hit the "Memory Wall", modern microprocessors can take 200 clocks to access DRAM, but even floating-point multiplies may take only four clock cycles.

3) Because of this, processor performance gain has slowed dramatically. In 2006, performance is a factor of three below the traditional doubling every 18 months that occurred between 1986 and 2002.

To understand where we are, and why the only way to go now is parallelism versus clock speed increase, see The Landscape of Parallel Computing ReseView from Berkeley [berkeley.edu].

Re:Intel Vs. AMD?

[Anonymous Coward]

Given that you can purchase a system with 3-4 GB quite cheaply, and by time these processors come to market the price will go down (though it's unlikely that computers will commonly come with over 4gb until 64bit is more reliable, or until there's some application that you actually need 4gb for.) It stands to reason that if you purchase a computer with one of these processors, it will come with 4gb of ram. As someone who runs vista with 3gb, i can assure you that it is enough for any needs I have found (I seldom get over 70% usage, and if i do at least 20% is Firefox and pidgin and their memory leaks, or i'm running a game.) (no IM client should hog 170+mb of memory, especially with only AIM running and only a few windows open, but i have it lying around, so i don't mind too much)

Vista also has a ceiling of 3.5gb if I remember correctly. I forget what the extra 512mb gets used for if you have it, but if you have 4gb of ram in a vista system, the system will not show a some 2^x mb amount of it, and it isn't some amount being dedicated to integrated graphics.

Re:The Giant is awakened

[Hal_Porter]

I think AMD will do OK. Once Dell and the like get used to using CPUs from multiple sources they will probably survive. And a small company like AMD probably has an edge in terms of shorter design cycles and the ability to pick niches. AMD64 was a brilliant hack in retrospect that gave people most of the features of Itanium they wanted (64 bit, more registers) and none that they didn't (and expensive single source CPU with crap integer performance). Meanwhile Intel got hopeless bogged down trying to sell people Itaniums that they didn't want.

AMD and they have other clever stuff in the pipeline. E.g.

http://www.tech.co.uk/computing/upgrades-and-peripherals/motherboards-and-processors/news/amd-plots-16-core-super-cpu-for-2009?articleid=1754617439 [tech.co.uk]

What's more, with that longer instruction pipeline in mind, it will be interesting to see how Bulldozer pulls off improved single-threaded performance. Rumours are currently circulating that Bulldozer may be capable of thread-fusing or using multiple cores to compute a single thread. Thread fusing is one of the holy grails of PC processing. If Bulldozer is indeed capable of such a feat, the future could be very bright indeed for AMD.

Re:Intel Vs. AMD?

[wild_berry]

Unreal founder Tim Sweeney says that Intel's integrated graphics are a real set-back for PC gaming (http://games.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/03/10/1239205 [slashdot.org]). Intel keep promising and failing to deliver substantive graphics performance (and even insisted on the 'Vista Capable' label being applicable to the Aero-incapable i915 graphics chipset to sell more of these chips - see http://slashdot.org/articles/08/03/01/1312233.shtml [slashdot.org] and http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/02/28/1746211&from=rss [slashdot.org]). AMD have released the 780G chipset which includes a Radeon HD2x00-class onboard graphics chip and which offers a good basic capability to play recent games.

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