Yesterday on the 26th of May, 2009, Intel previewed their latest member of the Xeon family, codenamed Nehalem-EX despite the global recession. Basically this chip will be the next streamline chips for high-end enterprise and server platforms.
Basically the summary of the new chip from Intel's site is as follows: (copied and pasted from Intel's site)
- Intel Nehalem Architecture built on Intel's unique 45nm high-k metal gate technology process
- Up to 8 cores per processor
- Up to 16 threads per processor with Intel® Hyper-threading
- Scalability up to eight sockets via Quick Path Interconnects and greater with third-party node controllers
- QuickPath Architecture with four high-bandwidth links
- 24MB of shared cache
- Integrated memory controllers
- Intel Turbo Boost Technology
- Intel scalable memory buffer and scalable memory interconnects
- Up to 9x the memory bandwidth of previous generation
- Support for up to 16 memory slots per processor socket
- Advanced RAS capabilities including MCA Recovery
- 2.3 billion transistors
It is also interesting to note that this chip will offer up to nine times the memory bandwidth compared to the previous generation chip (Xeon 7400). That's a whopping but worthy upgrade, especially with the rise in the usage of web applications. In time we'll see if this complements or hinder cloud computing concept.
The chips will be available by second half of 2009. We'll see what AMD will do by then.
Intel, Xeon and the Intel logo are trademarks of Intel Corporation in the United States and other countries.
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