14 DAY TRIAL // Intel may not have been as enthusiastic about high core counts on the PC CPU front until now, but that's set to change if a certain, recent report is to be believed. And there's no reason it shouldn't be (for now).
According to a report from VR-Zone, the Santa Clara, California-based company is preparing an 18-core chip designed on the 14 nm manufacturing process.
Said processor is set to become a Broadwell-EP unit or an EX Xeon when it comes out. There is no information on the specifications yet, which isn't all that surprising seeing as how the ETA (estimated time of arrival) is 2015.
Then again, it's likely that Intel will unveil multiple variants of the 18-core monster, so both those product lines might get their own.
What's more, there will be 10-core models as well, for high-performance desktops, as well as 12 to 16-core CPUs for enterprise servers.
Clearly, Intel is preparing to do what everyone hoped would happen when AMD introduced the 8-core FX processors a few years ago.
Granted, Advanced Micro Devices never claimed that its 8-core units would trounce everything in sight. In fact, it clearly said, prior to the launch, that the FX units weren't meant to battle Intel's Core i7 extreme units.
That didn't stop people from hoping though. Hoping and being disillusioned. It also didn't help that the chips came earlier than ideal, in a time when most programs barely knew how to use four cores, let alone 8.
By 2015, though, software makers should have a better grasp of multi-threaded application development, so multi-core processors like this 18-core creature will be more than just untappable resources.
Broadwell-EP is the extreme performance version of the Broadwell architecture scheduled for 2014 release. Broadwell will spawn both desktop/laptop chips as well as mobile processors featuring 4.5W TDP (thermal design power).