Chipzilla plans next-generation Xeons for early 2010

May 27, 2009 07:10 GMT  ·  By

Santa Clara, California-based Intel has just announced and detailed its upcoming next-generation Nehalem processor, codenamed Nehalem-EX. The world's leading chip maker says that its new Nehalem processor for server systems is currently scheduled to enter production in the second half of this year, with systems coming from the company's partners. According to Intel, customers will see a number of unique features, as the new chips have been designed to incorporate technologies the company borrowed from its Itanium architecture. In addition, Intel's next-generation server processors will provide users with the first 8-core CPUs, capable of considerable performance increases.

In a press conference held yesterday, Intel talked about some of the features customers should expect from its next-generation Xeon processors, based on the company's Nehalem-EX architecture. These new CPUs will be manufactured using Intel's current 45nm high-k metal gate technology and will provide 8 cores per processor, with support for up to 16 threads using Intel's Hyper-threading technology. Additional highlights of the new chips include the 24MB of shared cache, integrated memory controllers, Intel's Turbo Boost Technology, Intel scalable memory buffer and scalable memory interconnects, 2.3 billion transistors, support for up to 16 memory slots and Intel's new QuickPath Architecture with four high-bandwidth links.

With the design of the Nehalem-EX processors, Intel took advantage of the experience it had accumulated with its Itanium chips, which is why the upcoming models will be featuring the new Machine Check Architecture (MCA) Recovery. This technology has been borrowed by Chipzilla from its own Itanium processors. The solution is meant to detect system errors and work with the operating system to correct them. According to Intel, this will make systems more fault tolerant and enable customer to take advantage of a greater uptime.

Intel took the opportunity of the press conference to also demonstrate an 8-socket, 64-core, 128-thread IBM server that was based on the company's Nehalem-EX processors. The demonstration is available on video and you can take a look at it at the end of this article.

Chipzilla says its new Nehalem-EX-based Xeon processors are slated to enter production in the second half of this year, with the first systems scheduled to arrive in early 2010.

 

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Intel details next-gen Nehalem-EX-based Xeon processors
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