More info on 8-core Nehalem chip

Intel will reveal more details on its latest eight-core serverprocessor this week. Thanks to Hyperthreading, the CPU, known as the Nehalem-EX is able to process 16 threads simultaneously on the eight physical cores. As the name suggests, the chip consists of the Nehalem architecture, which includes a DDR3 memorycontroller, the fast QPI connection and an advanced energy management.

Nehalem-EX will be released by the end of 2009 or early 2010

The Nehalem-EX processor contains 2,3 billion 45nm transistors. The processor will be launched with a Xeon nametag, taking over the lead from the current hexa-core 'Dunnington' chip. The Dunnington is based on the 45nm 'Penryn' architecture, which means that it belongs to the older Core 2 generation. Thanks to the improved memory interface and the QPI connection between the CPU and the chipset, the Nehalem-EX could potentially be a lot faster than the Dunnington.

Shamefully, the eight-core Nehalem won't be replacing the Dunnington anytime soon; it's expected that the chip will be launched either by the end of this year, or early next.

Tags: ddr3 nehalem quickpath xeon core2

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