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."

Comments

Where do they get their sample units?

[Anonymous Coward]

Just for starters, notice that all the hardware sites get their test units from the manufacturers. In other words, they call the manu and say 'please send me a free hard drive to test for a review'. The manu then tries out 5 units to find the one that works best and sends it.

Consumers Reports, on the other hand, goes to the store and buys a random unit, same as you or I might.

Personally, I trust www.storagereview.com, but they do the same thing.

Re:In case of slashdotting

[Tribbin]

You make me realize how weird it is that I can just be too excited to see the newest CPU in too high resolution.

Re:I think we all know what is coming

[Anonymous Coward]

Hmmm, these kind of sites are becoming a nuisance.

Sorry, that website uses broken embed tags and Windows-specific registry CLSIDs to point to quicktime player. I don't have a "registry" or a "quick time" player. For those of us who choose our own browser helper applications (instead of it being decided by a "registry") here is the relevant link.

How else are they going to get early reviews?

[brucmack]

These sites are almost always reviewing products that haven't hit the market yet. They can't just go out and buy a retail unit if there aren't any available yet.

This is also how they can get away with paper launches... Make a few samples available to the reviewers to make it seem like the processor is available. In these cases, usually the review sample is such an early revision that anything a consumer touches probably works better.

Re:How else are they going to get early reviews?

[ChrisMaple]

You haven't done any development of complicated ICs, have you? Getting a new chip to run even partially is a major accomplishment. Following revisions are used to get it fully working, and when it's "close enough" samples are released. After it's fully working it may be revised to improve performance if there is an extreme market demand for higher performance, but only rarely to make it smaller (i.e. cheaper) until a process shrink is available. Possibly, troubleshooting circuits might be incorporated in early revisions and removed later, but they don't make an IC "more robust". Mask sets are very expensive for advanced processes, so they won't be made to remove a small amount of cost.

Vanderpool good for linux?

[cookie_cutter]

From what I've read in some other comments, vanderpool could let you run two operating systems at once.

If this could be done efficiently, and in a way which allowed users to easily switch between the two OSes, one could run linux and windows simultaneously. Then, instead of having to use a second rate application for those apps which haven't been replicated in the linux world, one could easily switch back to windows for those few necessary apps which were holding one back from trying out linux.

Linux adoption would go up as people find it easier to try it out without abandoning their familiar windows apps, which leads to more linux development, which results in more replacement of those windows apps(since there is still the cost benefit to switching to linux).

But don't forget...

[Kjella]

Just for starters, notice that all the hardware sites get their test units from the manufacturers. In other words, they call the manu and say 'please send me a free hard drive to test for a review'. The manu then tries out 5 units to find the one that works best and sends it.

...that there's such things as rated speeds. For a CPU that would be something like "This CPU is rated at 3.0 GHz, but it'll overclock to 3.6 GHz". Maybe the average consumer CPU won't overclock to that. But it's a pretty sure thing it *will* work at 3.0GHz, and that's the benchmarks I read.

As for harddisks, I imagine they find one with no remapped sectors (a "perfect" disk) but otherwise, I doubt they can do much either without rigging the specs. There's simply not much room for variability these days. Maybe they have a perfectly balanced/aligned disk that could do more than 7200rpm, but that's a different story.

Kjella

Re:But don't forget...

[InfiniteWisdom]

There was this story a while back about how manufacturers send units that are far better than the retail unit to reviewers.

For example, Samsung sent the reviewers LCD monitors with a 700:1 contrast ratio, while the off-the-shelf ones have only 450:1

http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/10/29/1352 20 9&mode=thread&tid=137&tid=149&tid=98&tid=9 9

Re:New ... but no Cigar

[Anonymous Coward]

Depends on the tasks set for the CPU's. For some tasks, dual-cpu's are the sweet spot for performance and cost. And if you're running renders, physics calcs etc a lot, the Xeons are the way to go, and for databases etc, the Opterons are the way to go. And besides, the dual Xeons have beaten dual Opterons, despite the Opterons running in 64-bit mode, with all those extra registers.... Now just think about what the Xeons will be able to do when they also get to play with all those extra registers.

Well, it could mean one of two things:

[Ayanami Rei]

1) The chip interface to the northrbridge has been improved and will allow it to go "Really Fast".

2) The chip has an intergrated memory controller and/or PCI express bridge/controller ala Opteron.

holy overloaded instruction set, batman!

[Stephen Samuel]

So, is this a 32 bit CPU that can act like a 64 bit CPU or a 16 bit CPU (based on it's 8 bit predecessor) or
is it a 64bit CPU that can act like a 32 bit CPU or it's 16bit predecessor (which is, itself based on an 8 bit design).?

I can understand why Intel wanted to go to a clean 64bit CPU implementation, but It's a bit late in the game for them.