Gazing down Intel's roadmap: quad-core Yorkfield set for Q3 2007

If nailing down the specs to Intel's Classmate PC wasn't thrilling enough, and you were left neck deep in transistors after wading through all those CPU announcements, how about a taste of next year, only right now? DigiTimes has it that Intel's roadmap (which has been surprisingly accurate thus far), already has plans for the next, next quad-core processor, dubbed Yorkfield. Slated to hit motherboards in Q3 2007, the Yorky builds on the forthcoming Kentsfield chip by operating in a "more efficient" manner. Whereas the Kentsfield rocks two separate L2 caches, shared separately by each pair of processors, the Yorkfield sports just a single L2 cache shared directly by each pair of chips, enabling more streamlined quad-core operation with less front side bus bandwidth. Manufactured on 45nm process technology, next year's quad-core CPU will be paired with the impending Bearlake chipset family (which will support a 1333MHz FSB and a PCI Express 2.0 interface), and will target that oh-so-lucrative "high-end gaming" market when it drops.

[Via TGDaily]

[David @ Sep 29th 2006 11:18AM]

Hmm still no Core 2 Duos in an Macbook though.

[ND @ Sep 29th 2006 11:40AM]

how come p4's were reining for so long and now they are dropping new poccessors every 1/2 year?!

[Wildside @ Sep 29th 2006 12:31PM]

i thought the quad-core was coming out this November? hmm guess not.

[Ben @ Sep 29th 2006 12:42PM]

it still is, they are talking about "the next, next quad-core processor, dubbed Yorkfield."

[Wildside @ Sep 29th 2006 12:42PM]

im getting AMD quad-core instead, better then Intel anyways. Comes out Q2 2007.

[Dallas @ Sep 29th 2006 1:12PM]

What's the point of getting quad core before 2008? There is hardly any software that takes advantage of quad core in 2007 and by the time it's worth getting QC, the price will far lower. Unless you want to impress the ugly girl next door, QC in 2007 is a waste of money.

Intel Core 2 DUO is the best bet for the next 12-18 months.

[Ben @ Sep 29th 2006 3:25PM]

I disagree. There are many applications that would benefit from having quad cores.

any xvid encoding (actually any rendering/encoding at that)
most new games (i cant wait for ut2007)

look for yourself
http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?i=2846&p=2

[Chad @ Sep 29th 2006 4:04PM]

I think the problem is most apps still don't benefit from dual core...at least as much as they could. Most programs are still single threaded, once programers start to use multi-threading more often, they'll be able to take advantage of the extra cores, 2 and above.

[Keaton @ Sep 29th 2006 9:49PM]

I'm really pissed...

I got a top of the line Core Duo Yonah based laptop as soon as these chips came out and I was so proud... for about 3 months... Then the Core 2 Duo based notebooks started coming out, then the quad core Kentsfield based processors and now I hear of an even better quad core prosessor? ugh!!!! My AMD 3700+ clawhammer based desktop (which was smoking only a YEAR ago) is SOOOOO obsolete now.

I don't understand why Intel keeps doubling the power of their new processors every 6 months. They're main competitor, AMD hasn't come out with anything earth-shattering since the FX-60... what the heck is Intel so scared of? Maybe AMD has something up their sleve dealing with maybe a GPU-CPU combo beast? I've heard all this stuff about how ATI GPU's have 20x-25x the power of the new Core 2 Duo CPU's... You don't hear about harnessing the power of nVidia GPU's do you? and who just bought ATI? I expect great things from AMD in the next 2 years... Intel's complete takeover of the processor market has been quite strange and if you ask me I think they are running scared. We will all see...

http://www.soggycowdesigns.com

[HughJass @ Sep 29th 2006 10:27PM]

Intel doubles the power because the consumers will buy it, not because they are afraid of anything and not because anyone actually *needs* the power.
"If you build it, they will come."

[leonet @ Sep 29th 2006 11:36PM]

In response to Keaton, ATI GPUs have "20 times" the speed because they are specialized chips running a limited instruction set. It has nothing to do with some secret technology. You can't use a GPU core as a CPU because it doesn't accept the x86 code that modern programs use.

I think AMD and ATI will come out with some great chipset+CPU combinations, but anyone who counts Intel out is ignorant of the MASSIVE R&D power behind Intel. It still far outpaces all the other companies except perhaps IBM.

[Ming-Tai @ Sep 30th 2006 1:44PM]

ooooh ... waiting for the first Octo Xeon Mac Pro.

[Michael @ Sep 30th 2006 7:47PM]

I forget who it was, but the popped open a quad-core Mac Pro, and popped in two of the upcoming Socket 771 Quad core Xeons. Eight cores in a Mac.

(Btw, I hate macs, I just thought it interesting that someone spends 2500 on a comp, then goes and adds to it, and once those processors hit the shelves, you know some people will go out, and buy some of those processors. Damn mac fanboys)

[John @ Sep 30th 2006 5:26PM]

Keaton, shouldn't you be happy? Faster performance for all, cheaper, faster.

[Alik @ Oct 24th 2006 10:30PM]

Intel is releasing their chips as they advance them. They came out with the quads basically fusing 2 core2duo's together so they want to throw them out to the market. And Why Not? Now they are making a single L2 4cores 1silicon chip, which AMD is doing also. A lot of speed loss these days come from HDD access. Unless your running raid a lot of processes will bottleneck at your drive. So the speed increase isn't that amazing. And mac's arn't that bad and they use Intel for a reason, (Stability). The quad mac xeons are nice for editors people who use Final Cut Pro, and they are cheaper then the quad system dell offers. Also you can run parrallels which runs windows XP native in a window inside the OSX GUI. (Nice!!!) No need for bootcamp.

[Solomon Ashurov @ Mar 27th 2007 2:21AM]

Well, the Pentium 4's did rein for a while from the blue side. What you have to understand is that not all P4's were the same. The were 4 different kinds. Williamette, Northwood, Prescott (My 630 was a B3AST), and the short lasted Cedar Mill. Technically, it was 4 different kinds of processors, just marketed with the same sticker.

[nitr0gen @ Aug 27th 2007 11:15AM]

"I don't understand why Intel keeps doubling the power of their new processors every 6 months."

It's called Moore's Law :D

Anyway, I made the mistake of rushing out to get the P4 when it first came out... BIG MISTAKE!!! Those first p4's were based on the Willamette core, which required $$$ RAMBUS $$$ :(

For my next box, I think I'll skip the Kentsfield core and wait for the Yorky :D