Intel to Launch Three Nehalem-Based CPUs by the Year's End

The Nehalem architecture is Intel's best bet for the future right now, and it really seems that "Chipzilla" is doing everything in its power to come up with CPUs based on this architecture as fast as possible, with no less than three such components being scheduled to arrive in the fourth quarter of 2008.

Thus, as Monica Chen reports for DigiTimes by quoting an unnamed inside source within one of the numerous Taiwan-based motherboard manufacturers, it would seem that the chip producer will most likely come up with three new Bloomfields by the year's end, each of them targeting Intel's new LGA1366 socket. The three CPUs, although yet not officially named, are supposedly code-named XE, P1 and MS and are running at core speeds of 3.2GHz, 2.93GHz and 2.66GHz, respectively.

According to the same source, each of the CPUs will have a TDP of 130W, 8MB of L3 cache and will support simultaneous multi-threading (SMT) technology. And since a processor is not really worth that much without a platform to support it, it would seem that Intel is also preparing the X58 and ICH10 chipset combination for a 4th quarter launch, just in time to support the aforementioned Nehalem CPUs.

The new X58 chipset will be quite a piece of work on its own, as it will be using Intel's QuickPath Interconnect (QPI) architecture, finally replacing the FSB. Additionally, Intel will most likely "go to bed with the enemy", since their platform will probably feature four PCI Express 8x slots and will support AMD's Quad CrossFireX technology (no word on any Nvidia SLI support for the time being, though).

All in all, it would seem that Intel's going on with its plans towards the domination of the CPU market and while AMD has had some interesting announcements lately, it remains to be seen whether it will be able to hold its own against its much bigger opponent and its Nehalems.

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