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INTEL will launch the next-generation Nehalem processor on Nov. 17, the company revealed Wednesday. In an event invitation, Intel said it will unveil Core i7, the first processor of the Nehalem family, which is targeted at high-end desktops. Test units of the Core i7 chips have already been shipped, with Web sites such as Tom's Hardware and PC Perspective praising its speedy performance. The Core i7 chip speeds range from 2.66GHz to 3.20GHz, according to retail Web sites.Chips based on the Nehalem microarchitecture will go into some systems priced at under US$1,000 at launch, said a source familiar with Intel's plans. The Core i7 920 quad-core chip running at 2.66GHz is priced at $329.99 at Isorm, an online retailer. The Core i7 940 running at 2.93GHz is selling for $639.99, while the Core i7 965 Extreme Edition running at 3.2GHz is priced at $1,149.99. The 940 and 965 also are quad-core chips. Nehalem chips are an upgrade from Intel's Core 2 chips, which are currently used in laptops and desktops. The chip technology cuts bottlenecks of Intel's earlier Core microarchitecture to improve system speed and performance-per-watt. The chips will later be scaled down for consumer desktops and laptops, and should be released in 2009.
Nehalem chips, with two to eight cores, will include QuickPath Interconnect (QPI) technology, which integrates a memory controller and provides a faster pipe for the CPU to communicate with system components, Intel has said. Each core can execute two software threads simultaneously, so a desktop with four processor cores could run applications quicker by running eight threads simultaneously. Down the line, Intel will be integrating graphics capabilities in Nehalem CPUs, which could cut down the need for an external graphics card and bring more power efficiency to desktops and laptops. High-end users, like gamers, might need a separate graphics card to meet their graphics needs. Nehalem chips are manufactured using the 45-nanometer process, which is also used to make the company's latest chips.
Intel's forthcoming Nehalem chips are set to be the fastest processors yet, according to the latest benchmark results. Available later this month, the first Nehalem parts are quad-core desktop chips bearing the Core i7 brand - the 3.2GHz Core i7 965 Extreme Edition, 2.93GHz Core i7 940 and the 2.66GHz Core i7 920. In tests conducted by vnunet.com's sister title Personal Computer World the Core i7 965 Extreme achieved a PCMark05 CPU score of 11072.
This is about 7.5 per cent higher than the previous high score of 10311 for a non-overclocked chip by an Intel QX9770 at the same 3.2GHz clock speed. However, a greater increase was found in tests that measure multi-threaded performance. The Core i7 scored 16202 against the older chip's 12544, almost a 30 per cent improvement. Styled by Intel as "the biggest platform architecture change in a decade", Nehalem features a modular design that scales from two to eight cores per chip, enabling it to target everything from mobile devices to enterprise servers. Versions of the design targeting the mobile and server segments are due in 2009. Nehalem also ditches the old system bus architecture in favour of memory connected directly to each processor chip, with a high-speed QuickPath Interconnect to link multiple Nehalem chips together and to the rest of the system. However, Intel will not have everything its own way. Rival AMD is poised to introduce an update to its quad-core processors codenamed Shanghai. Built using a 45nm production process like Nehalem, Shanghai will primarily target servers, a market in which AMD has perhaps had its greatest success in gaining market share.
The first three processors in Intel's new Nehalem generation shouldn't really have come out until mid-November, but Intel obviously wanted to forestall AMD's first 45-nanometre server processors, which are already being listed by online dealers.
The market leader in semiconductors has at any rate allowed the world's press to start reporting today on the test kits that were distributed a few weeks ago. These contain the Core i7 965 Extreme Edition – 3.2 GHz – and Core i7 920 – 2.66 GHz – 45-nm four-core processors developed under the codename Bloomfield, the DX58SO motherboard – codenamed "Smackover" – with the X58 – Tylersburg 36S/I10R – chipset, the LGA1366 processor socket and three DDR3-1066/PC3-8500 memory channels, two processor coolers, and one of the X25-M solid-state disks (SSDs) presented some time ago – DX58SO Smackover X25-M. As with the Atom, Intel has again reactivated hyper-threading (HT, Intel's implementation of simultaneous multi-threading, SMT) in the Nehalem generation processors.
HT was introduced with the Pentium 4 and later abandoned. Each of the four Core i7 cores thus reports a second "logical" or virtual core to the operating system, so that in certain situations better use is made of the available arithmetic and logical units. Hyper-threading is just one of many Nehalem innovations, however. Another is that Intel has now definitively turned away from the front side bus architecture. The memory controller is now in the processor itself, no longer in the Northbridge of the chipset. This is intended to shorten latency times appreciably when accessing RAM. As in the K10 generation of the AMD64 processors, all four cores of the Core i7 – each of which has 256 kilobytes of L2 cache – now have a memory controller – with three DDR3 channels, an – 8 MB – L3 cache shared jointly by all cores, as well as a QuickPath Interconnect (QPI, up to 25.6[ gigabyte/s]) housed on a chip, with 731 million transistors jostling each other in an area of 263 square millimetres. For comparison, in its Phenoms and quad-core Opterons fabricated in 65-nm technology in Dresden, AMD currently squeezes 450 million transistors on to an SOI die with an area of 285 square millimetres. Although we are talking here about Intel's handpicked test specimens of its new processors, the first benchmark results do nevertheless show their enormous potential. In the SPEC CPU2006, and with high optimized code thanks to Intel's latest C/C++ and Fortran compilers in version 11 beta, which already use SSE4.2 commands, a Core i7 965 Extreme Edition scored 110 points in integer throughput – int_rate_base_2006 – and 85.1 points in floating-point operations – fp_rate_base_2006, measured under 32-bit Windows Vista in each case. This first representative of Nehalem thus overtakes not only all previous x86 and x64 processors, but also most of the tandems made from two quad-core Opterons – 2360 SE: 92.7/84.7 points – and, in floating-point throughput, approaches two 3.2-GHz Xeons.
Unusually, we had to carry out the CPU2006 tests under 32-bit Windows instead of 64-bit Linux, because the 64-bit code of the benchmark suite requires 2 gigabytes of RAM per core, thus a total of 16 gigabytes for eight cores, but the Core i7 processors with 2-gigabyte DIMMs on boards with six slots can only drive a maximum of 12 gigabytes of RAM. Unbuffered DDR3 SDRAM DIMMs with a capacity of 4 gigabytes cannot yet be supplied. In more practical benchmarks, the Core i7 965 Extreme Edition can't so clearly outdo its predecessor, the Core 2 Extreme QX9770, which also has a clock frequency of 3.2 GHz, particularly in applications that compute with a single thread or with only a few threads in parallel.
The Core i7 965 was in any case just 8 per cent faster than the Core 2 Extreme QX9770 on an X48 motherboard with PC3 12800 memory – DDR3-1600 – in the BAPCo SYSmark 2007 benchmark, and in 3D games the Inhaler's lead was negligible most of the time – BAPCo SYSmark 2007 X48-Mainboard. Only World in Conflict, which obviously exploits several cores, ran somewhat faster on the Core i7 965. With some other games, even a Core 2 Duo E8600 – 3.33 GHz – held the lead. Multi-threading applications, such as compiling a Linux kernel, ran 26 per cent faster, and the Cinebench R10 rendering benchmark ran 34 per cent faster. Hyper-threading yielded marked advantages in compiling – 22 per cent – and rendering – 11 per cent, and HT only minimally slowed down the BAPCo SYSmark 2007. For our benchmarks, we had activated the new Turbo Mode, in which the processor over clocks itself unless all cores are working to full capacity.
Depending on the CPU's version, Turbo Boost raises the clock frequency by one or more steps, each step being 133 MHz. That is the basic frequency of the processor, which governs the higher clock frequencies of its arithmetic and logical units, the L3 cache, the memory controller, the memory modules, and the QPI. In our measurements, both Core i7 965 and Core i7 920 could be over clocked by one step in each case, which gave a performance boost of at best 5 per cent – but this makes the computer's power consumption rise markedly under full load.
At 194 watts with the CPU under full load and 82 watts in no-load operation, the system with the Core i7 965 was nevertheless still somewhat thriftier than the comparison system with the Core 2 Extreme QX9770 and with the same fittings as far as possible – the graphics card being a Radeon HD 4550 in each case. By the way, we used a standard, but quite lively SATA hard disk instead of the Intel SSD for our measurements. With a very powerful cooler and on motherboards with overclocking functions, you can set a higher thermal design power (TDP) for the Core i7 than it nominally has – 130 watts. If you then enable even higher Turbo Boost multipliers, automatic overclocking will reach the 4-GHz mark with the expensive Core i7 965 Extreme Edition. Besides the Core i7 965 Extreme Edition – list price $999 – and the Core i7 920 – $284, Intel also intends to release a Core i7 940 – 2.83 GHz – $562. The Lynnfield – quad-core, possibly without HT – and Havendale – dual-core plus graphics – versions of Nehalem that are intended for medium-range boards with an LGA1160 socket won't come out until the third or fourth quarter of 2009.
Besides Intel itself, at least Asus, EVGA, Gigabyte, Foxconn, and MSI intend to release LGA1366 boards with an X58 chipset, some with the SLI function. Any such board will cost more than 200 euros. Of course, Intel must now prove it can deliver the Core i7 and the X58 chipset as planned. Data sheets for the new products are not expected until mid-November.
Intel Corp.'s Nehalem chips, slated to ship later this month, today were called "blindingly fast" by an analyst who is using an early machine running the processor.
Steve Smith, vice president and director of operations for Intel's digital enterprise group, told Computerworld today that the first Nehalem chip, officially named Core i7, will be a quad-core designed for high-end desktops used by power users and gamers. He noted that on the day Intel officially launches the chip, several PC makers will begin shipping desktops running it. Intel has been shipping previews of the chips to hardware vendors since September. Rob Enderle, an analyst at the Enderle Group, said he's been test-driving an Intel-built desktop running the quad-core chip with the hyper threading turned on, so it's virtually an eight-core. "It's fast. It's really fast," said Enderle. "We're talking blindingly fast.
" The analyst also noted that the chip shows "significant improvement" in power efficiency. "It's very quiet and has low heat output. It's not turning my office into a sauna," he added. "A lot of people are concerned about their energy consumption. For high-performance to be energy-efficient is really important.
"Enderle also noted that Core i7 seems to be designed to work with Microsoft's upcoming Windows 7 operating system. He said the computer Intel sent him to try out is running Windows Vista, but he noted that chip designers had specs on Windows 7 while they were developing the new chip. "Corporations are more likely to move to Windows 7 than Vista," he added. "This would be good, because [Core i7] was developed with Windows 7 in mind. By the time Windows 7 ships, these chips should be in corporate and at least high-end desktops and workstations." The Nehalem architecture features a 45-nanometer, four-core processor with an integrated memory controller that eliminates the need for a front-side bus.
The new architecture is modular, which officials say will make it easier to scale from two to eight cores. The Core chips also are being designed to have two-way, simultaneous multi-threading, use Intel's QuickPath interconnect, and have a three-level cache hierarchy. Smith said an eight-core Nehalem is slated to ship in the second half of 2009, while two-core and four-core Nehalem chips for laptops should ship at about the same time.
E
arly benchmarks of the forthcoming Nehalem, aka Intel Core i7 processor, reckon it offers breakthrough performance, mostlyIntel's long-awaited Nehalem* processor has hit the net with a bang, and ChannelWeb says it is "so powerful that it simply destroys previous CPU benchmarks. An early look at the company's new chips shows they have the potential to drive current data center-class performance onto the desktop. … Early results show nearly historic levels of improvement over previous generations of processors."Indeed, YoYoTech, a UK-based supplier, has just announced "the fastest, single-processor, production machine ever," on SPEC benchmarks. Its Fi7ePower MLK1610 (sic) has an Intel Core i7 965 processor and 9GB of high-performance Corsair DDR3 memory on an Asus** P6T motherboard, and looks like an 8-core system (with hyperthreading) to your standard 64-bit Vista. YoYoTech (which has a shop at 30 Windmill Street, London, W1T 2JL) claims its £3,995 machine beats the fastest thing from Sun or IBM
by more than 50% -- but they'll soon have Nehalem based systems as well.There will also be much cheaper systems.For example, Custom PC has just published a rave review of the Scan 3XS X58 Core i7, a pre-overclocked PC running on an Asus P6T Deluxe. It concludes: "The PC industry moves forward at an often frightening speed but sometimes huge jumps in performance occur. With the arrival of Core i7, we are witnessing such a jump."If you want the details, AnandTech has a comprehensive 20-page review (which shows performance isn't so good with media encoding), while Guru3d crams it into 19 pages.Chips should be on sale around November 19. Sorry, Nehalem won't work in your old motherboard: it needs a new Socket B, aka LGA1366.* Nehalem is pronounced Na-HAY-lum, to rhyme with Salem. Nahalem is a river in Oregon, which is a common source of Intel US code-names. These include Deschutes, Klamath, Prescott, Tillamook and Willamette. It is not one of the Israeli lab's codenames -- which include Banias, Dothan, Golan, Merom, and Yonah -- even if it looks like it.
The use of Intel's Atom chip in sub-notebooks could undercut sales of its higher-end chips, Atom chips are low-cost and low-power processors that mostly are being used in netbooks designed for Web surfing and e-mail. With Fujitsu's new LifeBook U820 tablet PC, introduced on Tuesday, Atom chips are now being used in laptops with small screens, packed with networking and multimedia features.Tablet PCs usually feature Intel's more expensive Celeron and other dual-core chips, but using Atom chips in such systems could undercut sales of those higher-end chips, analysts said.Other than the screen size, the U820 mini-notebook offers capabilities similar to those of traditional laptops. It weighs 1.32 pounds (598 grams), includes Bluetooth and 802.11n wireless capabilities, and has a built-in website and high-definition video decoding. It also has a built-in Garmin GPS (global positioning system) receiver for navigation. It can be configured with as much as 1G byte of RAM and includes a hard disk drive as big as 120G bytes, as well as solid-state drive options.The U820 comes with a 5.6-inch swivel touch screen and runs the Windows Vista OS. A four-cell battery runs the tablet for up to seven-and-a-half hours, according to Fujitsu. Prices start at US$999.The U820 is a mini-notebook targeted at consumers and mobile users looking for touch technology, said Kevin Wrenn, senior vice president of PC business and operations at Fujitsu. Atom's low-cost and low-power features were a consideration in adopting the processor for the laptop, Wrenn said. Upcoming laptops from the company with screens up to 12 inches will incorporate Atom, he said.This laptop is the first of its kind running an Atom processor with this kind of advanced functionality, said David Daoud, an analyst at IDC. It is a sign that Atom-based devices are coming of age, and users looking for more functionality than what a netbook offers could adopt this ultramobile PC.In an economic downturn, a PC with a low-cost Atom chip also could be more attractive over expensive alternatives, he said."That processor provides opportunity for reduced cost and cost avoidance during tough economic times," Daoud said.Atom shipments are expected to witness healthy growth through the economic slowdown, IDC said in a study released on Monday. Atom shipments were good in the third quarter, totaling around 5 million units, IDC said.For a tablet PC, the LifeBook U820 has an interesting price point, though the Atom processor's real appeal lies in its power savings over Intel's higher-end Celeron and Core processors, said Nathan Brookwood, principal analyst at Insight 64."Atom's low-powered consumption ... is like 10 watts. The lowest you'd ever get with Celeron or Centrino is 15-20 watts," Brookwood said. For a tablet PC, that is very impressive, and if it allows for a smaller battery, that's important, he said."I don't think you could build a tablet PC in that form factor with even a low-powered Centrino," Brookwood said. Laptops like Fujitsu products, with Atom, could cut into shipments of the lower-end processors, but the laptop is new and results have yet to be seen, Brookwood said.Atom might bite into sales of Celerons first, followed by Pentium dual-core chips, which are on the lower end, said Dean McCarron, principal analyst at Mercury Research. With expenditure in check, people may instead opt for Atom-based systems."So far, there is not a lot of evidence that has happened, but it is certainly an area of concern," McCarron said.The use of the Atom processor is evolving, said Bill Calder, an Intel spokesman."What you're seeing is an evolution of the category. We've seen some areas where [PC makers] have expanded and broadened the feature set," Calder said.
In a unique move to acquire more customers and profits, Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) launched a PC-gaming graphics card on Thursday dubbed as the ATI Radeon HD 4830 which has been priced less than $150.The latest offering in the AMD's 4800 series cards supports high-definition content and Microsoft's DirectX 10.1 graphics technology in Windows Vista.The launch of this card points to the fact that AMD has adopted a strategy to provide graphic cards at reasonable prices but at the same time full of functionality, that would appeal all the customers. The newly launched AMD card will help the company to increase its market share.AMD's ATI CrossFireX technology, which let the gamers combine as many as four cards on one PC to enhance game performance, is supported by the HD 4830. This new card also fully supports mulitchannel audio called ‘surround sound.’The motherboards from ASUS, Club 3D, Diamond Multimedia, Force3D, Gecube, Gigabyte, Hightech Information Systems, Jetway, MSI, Palit Multimedia, PowerColor, Sapphire Technology and VisionTek, all support the latest HD 4830.HD 4830 has exactly the same 512 MB of GDDR3 memory as that of HD 4850. However, the new card has slower clock speed and fewer stream processors.
