Intel said to be prepping eight-core Xeon for launch next month
By Donald Melanson 
posted January 29th 2009 5:07PM
posted January 29th 2009 5:07PM
Nothing's official just yet, but Macworld is reporting that Intel will be rolling out an eight-core Xeon processor at the International Solid-State Circuits Conference in San Francisco next month, marking the company's first foray into octa-core processors, and paving the way for 16-core systems using two of the chips. Unfortunately, there aren't many more details than that, with the only other word being that it'll be a 16-thread processor, and be manufactured using a 45-nanometer process. As Macworld notes, however, it does seem likely that the processor in question is the Nehalem-EP seen on the roadmap above, which is based on the Tylersburg platform -- the first product of Intel's throw-a-dart-at-a-map naming scheme.
[Via 9 to 5 Mac]
[Via 9 to 5 Mac]
Incorrect. The 8-core chips are for incredibly expensive 4+ socket servers and will not be used in the Mac Pro.
So.... is the architecture changing to allow for more cores, or are they just linearly increasing the transistor count with cores? I thought the core architecture was so great because it allowed for the simple addition of cores. Whats stopping them from making a cpu with 32 cores and billions of transistors? Gate size? Heat dissipation? Price?
Die size/gate size and efficiently interconnecting all those cores. You have to get all that data to flow gracefully through all those cores otherwise there's going to be alot of waiting around. Intel has shown some prototype cpu's with 80 simple cores (not full core architecture cores) that they are using to improve upon the interconnect between integrated cores.
uh oh
Has anyone noticed that intel's core names would all make great town names?
"The architecture is named after the Nehalem River in Northwest Oregon, which is in turn named after the Nehalem Native American tribe in Oregon. The code name itself had been seen on the end of several roadmaps starting in 2000. At that stage it was supposed to be the latest evolution of the NetBurst architecture. Since the abandonment of NetBurst, the codename has been recycled and refers to a completely different project."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_Nehalem_(microarchitecture)
"Nehalem may refer to:
* The Nehalem (people), a tribe of Native American people who lived in the Pacific Northwest, also known as the Tillamook.
* The Nehalem language, one of the Salishan languages, was spoken by the aforementioned people
* Nehalem (song), by the band Everclear which appears on the album Sparkle & Fade
* Nehalem (microarchitecture), developed by Intel Corporation, successor to the Intel Core microarchitecture
In Oregon:
* Nehalem Bay, off of the Pacific Ocean
* Nehalem Bay State Park
* Nehalem River
* Nehalem Highway
* Nehalem, Oregon, a city
* Nehalem, a ship class in the computer game FreeSpace 2."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nehalem
A Large hardware vendor of mine said the Nehalem EP will be formally released in March and will be available immediately in new products. They will be simply known as the Xeon 5500 series and my understanding is they are going to be all 4 core / 8 thread CPUs.
Somehow I doubt they will have 8 core chips coming out next month as the Xeon 5500 is nothing more than a Core i7 processor with a different name.
I could be totally wrong here, but I am pretty sure this will not be a true 8 core Nehalem EP.
You are correct. The talk of Intel's 8-core announcement is likely for Beckton (Nehalem-EX). Intel have already announced it will be a 4 socket platform with 4-core processors, and have demoed and had it benchmarked with such a configuration. They have also talked about it comming in 6 and 8-core varieties, but not with much detail. This is probably where they will talk about the larger core versions and officially announce the Xeon 3500 and 5500 series release date as March 29th.
8-core processors for the DP platform probably won't be comming until the 32nm shrink (Westmere).
The speculation by the Macworld writer appears to be based on an assumption that Xeons=dual socket=Mac Pro.
I won't go in to depth on the price issue, but consider that 4-core 2.66GHz Becktons are likely to cost $3000 a piece, 8-core processors aren't going to be cheap whatever the platform.
@JonThomas
I agree, given the TDP and power usage of the current Core i7's, it doesn't seem like it would even be possible to release a decently clocked 8 core version without a die shrink. Although I had been secretly hoping for a surprise 2 die Kentsfield like version of the Core i7 with 8 cores. From a few slides I saw awhile back not even Westmere will bring 8 cores to the desktop or 2 socket server market, they're currently speced to be 6 cores. Check out the wiki article on the Nehalem arch, they've got good info for Westmere, Sandy Bridge and Haswell.
Correct. Just another article written by people who don't know WTF they are talking about..
The 8-core Nehalem Xeon parts will be exclusive to high-end 4+ socket servers, the Mac Pro and other dual-processor Xeon workstations will be limited to quad-core.
I see a 16-core Mac Pro in the future. WWDC 2009?? It's already at 8-core's.
I like how they skipped and every other company is gonna skip 6 cores because there afraid of the "Sex Core" title, lol
I believe six cores would be "Sexta" not "Sexa."
Can't intel just call them pentium dual, quad, etc. instead of changing it all the time?
does'nt AMD already have an 8 core
Now when did that happen?