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Intel 32/64-bit Nocona CPU
OCGeek writes "A picture of the upcoming Nocona processor of the Xeon family that has 64-bit
extensions known as Intel EM64T has appeared on
VR-Zone website. Nocona will have
604 pins and supports HyperThreading, SSE3, PCI Express, DDR2, Vanderpool
technology."
Perhaps you missed the whole DeCSS issue? "Without licensed DVD players for Linux and other operating systems, an entire class of computer users is completely cut off from viewing DVDs."
Here's the skinny on vanderpool.9 94215
http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99
It actually seems a really interesting technology. The CPU itself can generate virtual machines that can run different OS's simultaneously. Kinda like hyperthreading but on a much lower level.
A chip technology that will be available within five years, code-named Vanderpool, will allow users to partition the processor inside their computers. In a demonstration, Otellini used a PC to beam an episode of "The Simpsons" to a plasma TV, while another Intel executive booted and rebooted a game with the same machine.
From here
Intel talked about this at the last developers conference. Its the ability to run OSes and applications in partitions that are protected from trashing each other. Here's a blurb from one of the keynote addresses (about halfway down):
You may remember at the last IDF, Paul Otellini in his keynote did a demonstration and introduced a new technology, a new star "T" called Vanderpool Technology or VT. In that demo, he was in a home environment where he demonstrated by creating different stations in a virtualized station. You are able to run your PVR in one partition and the games in another partition without interfering with each other.
VT has applications not just in the digital home but also in the digital office. What are some of these usage models? Let's take a look. VT, likewise, can be used in business computers to create different partitions, to provide an IT partition where the IT mission-critical applications are well protected and not compromised by the user. At the same time, it can create partitions that can provide legacy support. In other words, applications that may not run under the new operating system.
Now, this is the kind of thing that's actually fairly common encountered in both large enterprises as well as more medium business.
An example we see in accounting software or asset tracking software, they're written and validated on an old operating system that have not been reported or validated.
As an example, my sister is a dentist and she has a billing system on her computer. She wouldn't dare to upgrade it because there's no support of porting that billing system to a new OS. And as a result, she continues to run on old hardware, old OSs, that expose herself to productivity and security issues. Not a good situation.
So let's take a look at how this actually works. I'd like to invite Jason Davidson out here to show us how VT benefits the enterprise.
(Demo begins and ends.)
BILL SIU: So in the coming several years, we'll be working with many of our business colleagues, many of you present here, to develop this capability and bring this kind of improvement to the enterprise. We think this is of just great value to manageability, providing both end user benefits as well as IT value.
One assumes the demo shows them crashing an application yet the other application keeps on working.
to the Engineer, the glass is neither half full nor half empty. Its just two times too big.
Quick screen capture of the entire (tiny) article here
The GDM link points to here (japanese)
The Xeon roadmap link points to another vr-zone article here (probably also slashdotted)
Kinda contentless, apart from the pic.
Here are the actual pictures.. http://www.vr-zone.com/newspics/Mar04/21/Nocona-1- s.jpg
and
http://www.vr-zone.com/newspics/Mar04/21/Nocona-2. jpg
This was demonstrated at the fall 2003 Intel Developer Forum. They operated two virtual machines, one running linux and one running windows, and rebooted one of the machines with the other unaffected.
I'm not sure which one they rebooted but I have a pretty good guess.
Support for PCI Express and DDR2 are dependent on the chipset, not the processor, in Intel CPUs. So saying that the Nocona processors support PCI Express and DDR2 is pretty stupid... Any Intel processor could use them so long as they were running on a chipset that did.
Of course, Intel normally releases new chipsets with a new revision of a processor family, but that is another matter entirely. Since the site is down, I have no idea if this is discussed at all.
unlikely. Earlier revisions are often quite a bit more robust than the final product. They tend to make it work first, then whittle out as much cost as possible.
That should be, IBM's hardware abstraction technology
I predict the nonoca will adopt the name "Intel Xeon Championship Edition."
You laugh now, but it's already been done with Serverworks chipsets.
You know, a company called Serverworks (I think part of Broadcom now), had used "Champion" as their first Xeon chipset at 66MHz FSB, Champion II for 100MHz FSB, Champion III for the 133MHz chips, and Champion IV which is now renamed "Grand Champion" for the current 400 and 533 MHz FSB, with HE, LE, SL, HE-SL and WS sub variants. HE is a quad CPU chipset, the rest ar dual, I haven't looked to see what the other differences are.
See for yourself:
Broadcom Grand Champion chipsets & more
Virtual PC is emulation, therefore you take a nice speed hit. Vanderpool is hardware based. It uses the actual hardware on your machine.
Buy Opterons .... They scale better. Dual systems.. its about neck and neck with Xeons but go to quads and the Opterons eat Xeons for Lunch. Oh .. and the Opterons are cheaper too. It's a no brainer folks. It wall take alot more then copying AI64 from AMD to put the Xeons on top. Indeed soon with how the Opterons scale they will eat up the Itantics too.
I prefer to get Opterons over "Xeopterons", if for no other reason than because Intel blatantly ripped off the 64-bit extensions from AMD, and didn't even bother mentioning them in the "ia32e" specification documentation.
Granted, AMD is making designs based on Intel's ancient and decrepit architecture, but at least they acknowledge this and give Intel credit where credit is due. Many of AMD's AMD64 technology papers are published as the differences between Intel's IA32 papers and their design.
Of course, the fact that Opterons scale better due to not sharing all memory bandwidth between CPUs, using HyperTransport for interCPU communication, and having a dedicated and integrated low-latency memory controller for each individual CPU helps in the Opteron-vs-Xeopteron choice as well....
Computer Science is no more about computers than astronomy is about telescopes. --E. W. Dijkstra