14 DAY TRIAL // Today, Intel officially unveiled the brand name for its upcoming processors, which are built on the highly talked about Nehalem architecture. The company did not release any specific technical details about the future chips, but only the products' logos and brand names. Fortunately, users will soon get to know more about the next-generation processors, after this year's Intel Developer Forum, where the chip maker is expected to reveal further specifics.
The IDF will be held in San Francisco at the Moscone Center, between August 19 and 21, just a couple of days before the IFA show in Berlin.
The upcoming chips will be provided for the company's server, desktop and mobile business segments. They are meant to improve on the existent Core 2 chips, which are currently at the basis of most portable and desktop computer systems. The Nehalem is expected to cut bottlenecks of Intel's earlier Core microarchitecture, thus improving system speed and performance per-watt. Furthermore, Intel is integrating graphics capabilities in the CPU, a feature that should bring more power-efficiency, eliminating the need for discrete graphics. On the other hand, the integrated graphics will probably not be a solution for gamers, who will still require the power of discrete graphics.
Intel's first samples of the Nehalem chips will surface on the market sometime in Q4 this year, under the Core i7 brand name. The company is expected to release chips for servers, although no official details on exact dates have yet been made available. "The Core i7 brand is the first of several new identifiers," said George Alfs, an Intel spokesman.
At IDF, the Santa Clara-based chip maker will also shed some light on its system-on-chip product, which integrates a CPU, graphics processors, video and memory controller into one single chip. One such chip is the Moorestown, which is currently in development and is believed to succeed the Atom, sometime in 2009 or 2010.