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Details of New Intel Dunnington and Nehalem Architectures Leaked

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on from the aren't-leaks-just-more-effective-pr-these-days dept.

Daily Tech is reporting that details about Intel's new processor models were leaked over the weekend. Both the six core Dunnington and Nehalem architectures were featured in this leak. "Dunnington includes 16MB of L3 cache shared by all six processors. Each pair of cores can also access 3MB of local L2 cache. The end result is a design very similar to the AMD Barcelona quad-core processor; however, each Barcelona core contains 512KB L2 cache, whereas Dunnington cores share L2 cache in pairs. [...] Nehalem is everything Penryn is -- 45nm, SSE4, quad-core -- and then some. For starters, Intel will abandon the front-side bus model in favor of QuickPath Interconnect; a serial bus similar to HyperTransport."

16 of 147 comments (clear)

  1. Dunnington and Nehalem? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    Sounds like good names to be used in a D&D game!

    Sir Dunnington against the evil lich lord Nehalem!

    1. Re:Dunnington and Nehalem? by milsoRgen · · Score: 4, Informative

      Sounds like good names to be used in a D&D game! I've always liked the way Intel code names their processors, as I was born and raised in Tillamook, which had it's own Mobile Processor. Nehalem, is in fact another city in Tillamook County, Oregon. Some of you might remember Nehalem's prior claim to fame was an Everclear song on their breakthrough album Sparkle and Fade, entitled simply 'Nehalem'.
      --
      I'm sick of following my dreams. I'm just going to ask where they're goin' and hook up with 'em later.
  2. Wow by TubeSteak · · Score: 4, Funny

    They could have gone to 3 cores, like the competition. That seems like the logical thing to do, but they said "Fuck it, we're going to six". What part of this don't you understand? If two cores is good, and four cores is better, obviously six cores would make them the best fucking CPU that ever existed.

    http://www.theonion.com/content/node/33930
    /I'm just waiting for the day Intel says "this one goes to 11"

    --
    [Fuck Beta]
    o0t!
    1. Re:Wow by suso · · Score: 4, Funny

      For all we know, someone at Intel just thought the "sex-" prefix would be funny, rather than the expected "quad-" or "octo-".

      Note how they called the it the (Pent)ium II instead of the (Sex)ium processor.

    2. Re:Wow by Tridus · · Score: 4, Informative

      Yes, I do. I don't often have something running in the background thats really active though, like a compiler. A typical setup would be something like World of Warcraft, Ventrillo, Firefox, Wireshark (watching WoW traffic is a hobby during wipe recovery), and stuff like that. The second core still isn't particularily taxed.

      In order to spike both cores, I need to start something like a compiler or video encoder, which is going to also eat I/O time. Its the I/O that slows down WoW more then the CPU usage. Since adding four more cores drastically increases my parallel processing power (which I don't need more of now), and doesn't do a thing for my I/O throughput (which I do need more of), its not really all that helpful.

      Thats why this doesn't excite me a whole lot. We were already at a spot where a single core is more then fast enough for a majority of mainstream users, and now we're going to give out six of them? Other then being able to run spyware more effeciently, whats actually being gained?

      (There are people who will benefit from this type of thing, of course. I just don't see the mainstream market as part of that group.)

      --
      -- "So they told me that using the download page to download something was not something they anticipated." - Bill Gates
  3. QuickPath vs HyperTransport by Dice · · Score: 5, Interesting

    The Wikipedia page on QuickPath is very lacking in the realm of details. Does anyone know how it stacks up against HyperTransport? One of the most mouth-watering proposed uses for HT3 that I've heard of was the possibility for an external HT3 bus on a machine which could be used to link together multiple physical machines into one giant NUMA beast.

    Imagine a Beowulf of those ;)

    1. Re:QuickPath vs HyperTransport by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Informative

      http://www.realworldtech.com/page.cfm?ArticleID=RWT082807020032

  4. But... by chinkuone · · Score: 5, Funny

    Still doesn't run Crysis.

  5. Intel still playing the Chuck Norris of vendors... by TeknoDragon · · Score: 4, Funny

    QuickPath: because Intel doesn't adopt standards... it rewrites them.

  6. Re:6 cores times 3MB = 16MB? by The+End+Of+Days · · Score: 5, Informative

    The L3 cache is 16MB. Each pair of cores shares 3MB of L2 cache. They aren't the same thing at all.

    Note: if you're tempted to mod this up, don't. I rehashed the summary.

  7. Welll.... by downix · · Score: 5, Funny

    Does it go to 11?

    --
    Karma Whoring for Fun and Profit.
  8. Re:Intel still playing the Chuck Norris of vendors by nonsequitor · · Score: 5, Interesting

    QuickPath: because Intel doesn't adopt standards... it rewrites them.
    Why should Intel pay AMD to license HyperTransport? The specs may be open to developers, but that does not mean they are unencumbered by patents. Even if they could, why Would they?

    I don't really know the situation surrounding the technology, but even if Intel could use it for free, they would lose a huge battle in the PR War. I can see it now, "Remember that interconnect AMD has been using for years now? Well our design has finally caught up with theirs enough to use it." Remember that to the masses, the non-slashdot crowd, they have no idea what the techno-jargon spouted by Intel marketing means.

    Intel currently has the superior technology, this is because of superior fabrication capabilities, not because of a superior architecture, if I've been following this correctly over the last few years. The general public is oblivious to the fact that internally the AMD architecture is cleaner and more elegant, the only thing they have to go on is marketing. If Intel were to adopt HyperTransport, which IIRC is trademarked by AMD, that would be a huge step backwards for Intel marketing, which is just recovering now that the Core 2 architecture has put them back on top.
  9. Re:FSB by networkBoy · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Very true!
    Now, hopefully Intel will open the new bus to third party apps (like that FPGA opteron drop-in). I'll admit I'm an Intel fanboy, but I'd buy an opteron system in a heartbeat if I could pony up the $5K for that co-processor...

    What surprises me is the current lack of complaints that you can't drop these new processors into an old board, as a new socket will be required (this is because the northbridge is rolling into the CPU IIRC). I don't see it as a big deal, because usually when upgrading the CPU one also is upgrading the memory and MB as well.
    -nB

    --
    whois gawk date unzip strip find touch finger mount join nice man top fsck grep eject more yes exit umount sleep dump
  10. Re:6 cores times 3MB = 16MB? by sssssss27 · · Score: 5, Funny

    Which kind of puts in perspective just how long Duke Nukem Forever has been in development. It's almost getting to the point where the CPU alone meets the minimum requirements for RAM.

  11. Re:Intel still playing the Chuck Norris of vendors by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Informative

    Please check your facts, AMD doesn't _own_ HyperTransport, so why would Intel have to pay them anything? HyperTransport can be used royalty-free by anyone joining the HT consortium. Yes, AMD is a member of the consortium, just like a lot of other tech companies such as NVIDIA, one of AMD/ATi's biggest competitors. AMD are not the owners of the technology nor are they in control of the HT consortium. They are simply one of the most visible tech companies that has strongly embraced HT in their products.

  12. It's from the book of Armaments by hcdejong · · Score: 4, Funny

    ...then shalt thou count to three, no more, no less. Three shall be the number thou shalt count, and the number of the counting shall be three. Four shalt thou not count, neither count thou two, excepting that thou then proceed to three. Five is right out. Once the number three, being the third number, be reached, then l...