Legit Reviews

Staff at the Inquirer are reporting that Intel have developed a new CPU with six cores. Accodring to their source "eclipse.sys-con.com" it was "designed in Bangalore, and will use three dual core 45 nanometre Penryn processors with a shared 16MB L3 cache."

http://legitreviews.com/news/4534/

why dont they just move to an 8 core chip using the old pentium D/q6x00 trick?

I call BS on the inq on this one

HONkUS wrote:I call BS on the inq on this one

i may not go that far, but i don't think we'll actually see anything of the sort in the near future.

come on dual die is nuts enough but triple die? and besides why would they do something like this? to combat a dual die octal core AMD part? if thats the reason why not do 4 dies on a proc instead of 3? How does it make sense for them to do this? Maybe im wrong but to me

6 core proc = 5 assed monkey

Well the article says its a precursor to Nehalem.

If they have the CSI interconnect in place, there will be a low latency and high speed link between cores. (The core(s) could communicate directly with each other)
This may never see the light of day, it could just be an internal thing for Intel to help with R&D

In the small cluster server market there are a few chip manufactures offering six core CPU's with up to 16Mb cache already. Of course these chips are not x86, but do use an AMD or Intel x86 chip to interface the data to and from the server.

One known server cluster maker has the ability to hold over 250+ cores in their machine. Of course, you and I could never touch these beasts for price. Just the memory alone runs in the 10's of thousands of dollars.

Mostly these machines are used for research and analytical number crunching. The latest record is 390Gflops.

Yes, six cores will be something. The number of cores will go higher, but the cores will get smaller. The more smaller defined cores, the more number crunching can be done.

I understand that there are supercomputers with several processors out there but the keyword is processor not core. super computers these days rarely use custom architecture, infact the only i know of is IBM's blue gene and ever it uses Power PC chips. most others use server procs like standard opertons only they use hundreds of them linked together. Those processors follow the same restrictions most desktop processors follow including TDP. 3 dies on a proc, even at 45nm will put out a ton of heat. Hell look at the current dual die quad core intel chips, alot of CPU coolers cant be used with them because of their high TDP (isn't it like 125w or something?) in order to have a triple die proc each die would have to have a TDP of 40w or less to be viable in a PC. What would that mean for single threaded apps? a 20w core probably wouldn't perform all that well given the price point of these parts, regardless of what architecture it is.

HONkUS wrote:I understand that there are supercomputers with several processors out there but the keyword is processor not core. super computers these days rarely use custom architecture, infact the only i know of is IBM's blue gene and ever it uses Power PC chips. most others use server procs like standard opertons only they use hundreds of them linked together. Those processors follow the same restrictions most desktop processors follow including TDP. 3 dies on a proc, even at 45nm will put out a ton of heat. Hell look at the current dual die quad core intel chips, alot of CPU coolers cant be used with them because of their high TDP (isn't it like 125w or something?) in order to have a triple die proc each die would have to have a TDP of 40w or less to be viable in a PC. What would that mean for single threaded apps? a 20w core probably wouldn't perform all that well given the price point of these parts, regardless of what architecture it is.

Look at the soon to be released 45nm Quads!
They clock to <4GHz with air cooling!
There are low voltage Quad 45nm Xeon CPU's on the way too. Once the new Intel CSI interconnect arrives, You'll see some crazy speeds in the server market.
There are also IBM & Sun servers based on the Cell processor. This CPU design is also developing.
Let's not forget the new Sparc CPU's from Sun!

kenc51 wrote:

HONkUS wrote:I understand that there are supercomputers with several processors out there but the keyword is processor not core. super computers these days rarely use custom architecture, infact the only i know of is IBM's blue gene and ever it uses Power PC chips. most others use server procs like standard opertons only they use hundreds of them linked together. Those processors follow the same restrictions most desktop processors follow including TDP. 3 dies on a proc, even at 45nm will put out a ton of heat. Hell look at the current dual die quad core intel chips, alot of CPU coolers cant be used with them because of their high TDP (isn't it like 125w or something?) in order to have a triple die proc each die would have to have a TDP of 40w or less to be viable in a PC. What would that mean for single threaded apps? a 20w core probably wouldn't perform all that well given the price point of these parts, regardless of what architecture it is.

Look at the soon to be released 45nm Quads!
They clock to <4GHz with air cooling!
There are low voltage Quad 45nm Xeon CPU's on the way too. Once the new Intel CSI interconnect arrives, You'll see some crazy speeds in the server market.
There are also IBM & Sun servers based on the Cell processor. This CPU design is also developing.
Let's not forget the new Sparc CPU's from Sun!

actually ken, even the quads out now can clock to <4ghz on air

HONkUS wrote:I understand that there are supercomputers with several processors out there but the keyword is processor not core.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/06/21 ... ummer_ship

" ... Some of you will remember that SiCortex took our TopFLOP 2006 award for crafting the most compelling supercomputer of the year. The company has taken six-core MIPS chips, put 27 of those chips on each server board and then slapped 36 of the server boards in a DeLorean-inspired case. This beast gives a customer 5832 GFlops of horsepower while chewing through just 20 kilowatts (10W per chip) of power."

"...The big daddy 5832 starts around $1.5m, while its little brother the SC648 starts at around $200k. Since these systems hold huge amounts of memory - 7776GB for the SC5832 – the prices vary quite a bit."

My company has been considering the SC648. http://www.sicortex.com/products/sc648

Yes, only 10W per six cores on a chip providing well over a half-teraflop of peak performance! ... and plugs into a standard 110v outlet.

I stand corrected

HONkUS wrote:I stand corrected

It's not one of those things everyone knows day in and day out. BUT, it does give hope to us PC gamers and lite number crunchers of things in the very near future to look forward too. Just think, a mega-multi-core running mega Gflops for just under 3-grand in a decade!

More Here: http://www.theinquirer.net/gb/inquirer/ ... dunnington

& Here: http://aceshardware.freeforums.org/sun- ... -t385.html

PDF here: http://at.sun.com/sunnews/events/2008/j ... ustria.pdf
slide 14 comfirms 6-core Dunnington.

just for fun I e-mailed Intel a few minutes ago about these leaks and got this in response.

Dunnington is the next Intel® Xeon® Server CPU designed with Enhanced Core™ Microarchitecture and built on our 45nm Hi-K metal gate process technology.

We have previously announced that Dunnington will be pin compatible with Tigerton in the Caneland platform, and will be available in 2H’08. In addition, with Intel’s VT FlexMigration Assist feature, applications running under VMware’s ESX can be readily moved between Tigerton- and Dunnington-based versions of Caneland.

As far as number of cores, power and performance of Dunnington, Intel does not comment on rumor and speculation.

Just thought I'd share with the community.

Intel's lip tight for now.

I'm still awaiting for the AMD Opteron "Barcelona" Quads.

Crazy, but it makes sense considering Nehalem will be bringing 8 cores as standard. Intel has made some odd processors before, Tulsa just being one of them. That was a specialized Netburst dual-core, 2mb L2, 16mb L3 chip., which they released after they had already launched the Core 2 chips. Seems pretty solid to me that Intel is seriously considering, or already decided to continue the MP family line in their usual if odd tradition...