14 DAY TRIAL // Intel's Nehalem processors aiming at the mainstream market still make us wait a little longer before having them in our hands. It seems that it will be over a year or so until the chip manufacturer unleashes its performance giants on the market. This year will bring us Bloomfield, another Nehalem based processor, and the release date nears, it's about six weeks away, as the news says. As for 2009, only the third quarter will be a fruitful one.
While Q1 and Q2 seem to remain blank, Q3 2009 should bring us the mainstream Lynnfield and Havendale Nehalem processors. A year may prove to be too long to wait, mainly considering the speed at which the industry comes with new revolutionary technologies. Intel enthusiasts may keep their hope alive until that time, but there is no guarantee that waiting will pay off indeed. Especially considering the fact that one of the CPUs will arrive with integrated graphics.
According to a roadmap published by Expreview, the fourth quarter of 2008 will come with Intel's Bloomfield processor, aimed at the extreme, performance and mainstream segments of the market. Still, the heavy cavalry for the mainstream area will arrive only next year, with Lynnfield and Havendale processors.
Nehalem's Lynnfield will feature support for a pair of x8 PCIe slots for graphics. The processor will also have four cores with eight-way multi-threading, all due to Intel's Hyper-Threading technology, along with 8MB of cache and an integrated dual channel DDR3 memory controller. The Lynnfield will aim at the performance and mainstream levels.
The second Nehalem to come at the same time, Havendale, will be Intel's first central unit processor to be equipped with integrated graphics. This also puts some limitations on the chip, and it will feature only a dual-core design with four-way multi-threading and 4MB of cache.
Both processors will also feature support for the Turbo technology from Intel. In order to communicate with Ibex Peak ICH, the two CPUs will use a DMI interface. The Havendale seems to also include a FDI bus, which is likely to have a tight connection with Intel's Flash Data Integrator technology but, at this point in time, it is not sure whether it's the same technology or not.
