14 DAY TRIAL // It seems that a few more pieces of info on Intel's roadmap for the 2008-2010 timeframe have leaked to the web and, although they have not been yet officially established as accurate, some sites already jumped on publishing articles on the matter. Looking at the chip manufacturer's already confirmed plans, the leaked information seems to be reliable enough, at least for what Intel has in mind at this moment, but no one can say for sure that changes will not appear in the future.
An article published by PCWatch earlier showed a number of diagrams that presented some Nehalem breakdowns, and those interested in making a comparison between Lynnfield, Havendale, Westmere, and Bloomfield can take a look at them here. The diagrams we attached to this article give more information on Intel's roadmap until 2010, as well as some specs on the Atom processor.
Intel has already launched strong value parts on the market, and E7300 (2.6GHz Wolfdale, 3MB L2) is one of them, although is seems that its projection on the “Essential” is not too accurate. Q4 is stated to bring Bloomfield for the “Mainstream 3”, and this will be the only Nehalem to launch until Q2/Q3 2009, when a full flavored Core i7 lineup is expected to burst. The Core 2 will be pushed to the “Value 2” area at that time. The Core 2 Duo technology seems to go into the Celeron segment after that, and the Nehalem line will cover all the other areas. The new Atom processors set for launch in Q3 2008 are also present in the diagram.
According to the chart, the first half of 2010 will bring the six-core Westmere for the high-end segment of the market. The chip manufacturer seems to be planning the push of quad-core and hexa-core processors into the mass market, although there are few applications that would support this number of processors.
The Atom 330 will be launched in the next few weeks, while Atom 230 is already here. The new chips should come in 2009, but it remains to be seen whether Intel will have the single-core released before the dual-core model. The roadmap shows changes in the CPU's platform as well as an integrated GPU core, but it's not clear yet whether the GPU core will be integrated in the Atom or the company will go for a multi-die package.
Most likely, the new processors will also feature an integrated memory controller, given the fact that the boards use DMI and not the standard FSB. The chip manufacturer is suspected to opt for the use of an MCM package for Pinefield, with the CPU+IMC on one die, and the GPU core on the other. The MCH and the ICH are connected through the DMI link, making the FSB term unusable.
Hopefully, Atom will have a friendlier desktop chipset, one that will also fit its power consumption. Currently, both Atom 230 and the next-to-come Atom 330 work on the rather old 945GC platform, which needs more energy to operate than the Atom itself. The new processors will probably have higher clock speeds as well.
