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Intel Unveils 6-Core Xeon 7400
JagsLive recommends CNet coverage that begins "Intel officially unveiled its six-core 'Dunnington' Xeon 7400 processor Monday ... As expected, Intel launched the Dunnington chip for high-end servers ... The Xeon 7400 is also one of the first Intel chips to have a monolithic design. In other words, all six cores will be on one piece of silicon. To date, for any processor having more than two cores, Intel has put two separate pieces of silicon ... inside one chip package."
I'm betting new Mac Pros will be launched today.
Is it just me, or does 6 seem like a counter intuitive number of cores ?
2,4,8,16 ... we've been using binary since the start, now we have to start in trinary ?
I think they're really making 8-core chips but their factories are primitive so normally only about six of them work.
These chips are all defective. I wouldn't buy one and neither should you.
No sig today...
There wasn't much in terms of technical specs in TFA. 6 cores, 16MB cache, anything else? Clock speed? 16MB of L2? L3? FSB? DDR(n)? (Though this is probably more up to the MB manufacturer) Why are they moving the memory controller off silicon? That in itself seems like a step backwards.
I would like to see them pushing consumer multi-core computing more personally. Get MS and other application manufacturers to support more cores. Servers have been doing it for ages and with pretty much all consumer level chips being dual core they should be pushing this angle more.
Though, them incorporating all of the cores on a single piece of silicon is definitely a step forward; the lack of additional specs and the notion of moving the memory controller make this seem like not as big of an announcement...
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I think server builders these days are less interested in the number of cores per CPU and more interested in improvements in the performance/wattage ratio.
i might finally be able to play crysis on my vista ultimate machine? i mean, granted, my pc will look more like a LHC when im through with it...but a few black holes are worth it
Good people go to bed earlier.
"There's an odd catch, however, that will affect the highest of high-end configurations. "Because Microsoft Windows operating system support is limited to a 64-core environment, within a single OS instance, we'll support up to 64 cores," said Colin Lacey, a Unisys marketing vice president."
Gads, who on earth would run a 64-core Windows box? Unless they want to virtualize out multiple servers on one bit of hardware. Most of the "heavy lifting" I've seen on servers with mucho processor cores are running some flavor of Unix. I'm kinda surprised this hasn't been fixed already given the momentum of multi-core processors.
Cheers,
I heard from someone from Dell that Intel had plans for 8 by the end of the year and 12 by June 09.
And we are in mid-September and only deliver 6? I guess thats what I deserve for trusting Dell rep's
Make SELinux enforcing again!
Really. Why 6 cores? Or 4 or 2 for that matter?
Doesn't that just validate the Ever Increasing Bloat (TM) of software.
I'm not being a smart a$$. I don't understand these incremental increases for software that only marginally changes...except in size.
It's a Xeon. It's for your server. It's not for the Ever Increasing Bloat (TM) of software, it's for the Ever Increasing Server Load (TM) of Successful Business.
My god... it’s full of stars...
... and each one will have it's own processor core.
When his defense asked, "Which computer has Jon Johansen trespassed upon?" the answer was: "His own."
But I've got users who are upset they *aren't* getting a dual-core "because I need it". Doesn't matter that they are working on Access databases!
And how will you power it build your own nuclear power plant?
Being stuck in a windows world I see no benefit in multi core CPUs since XP does NOTHING with the 2nd core. I have a dual core CPU at work and CPU utilization NEVER goes over 50% meaning only one core is doing the work.
Does VMware workstation or Ubuntu actually make use of the extra cores?
Obama's legacy: (N)othing (S)ecure (A)nywhere and (T)error (S)imulation (A)dministration
Thankfully the core Python developers have been telling us that continued hardware development of adding more cores is simply not happening. Furthermore, this evolution of continued development is simply wrong, bad, and is silly. To make matters worse, we are all delusional and no one is running more than one core and anyone leveraging more than one core is using their computer poorly and inefficiently.
Thankfully, here very soon, we'll all reason that Intel, AMD, ATI, and NVIDIA are all doing the wrong thing and making use of additional cores (and especially SMP) is always the worst way of increasing concurrency.
In all seriousness, hopefully these guys will realize they are dreaming and actually bother to increase scalability with sane, proper, scalable, and programmer friendly methods for doing so.
6 = 8 - 2 broken cores ?
You joke but that's already the case with PS3's Cell (7 SPU = 8 - 1 broken), with tripple core Phenom (3 = 4 - 1 broken), and with a very high number of graphic cards (The range segment {pro/mid/low-cost} on which a GPU is used = the number of functional cores they managed to salvage)
A separate reason may be the number of {quickpath/hypertransport/etc.} interconnects (6 cores require 15 interconnect to communicate, 8 cores require 28 interconnects). 6 to 8 cores isn't such a big increase but keeps the number of inter connect reasonnable.
(Other processors types like Tilera end up only interconnecting adjacing cores on their 64x chips and you have a strongly *Non*-Uniform Architecture, with not all core able to reach and talk to others at the same speed)
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
Again, this is a defective four core chip which you've been duped into purchasing.
No sig today...
I'm holding out for a 12 core processor.
I'm also holding out for a razor blade with 6 blades, screw those wimpy 5 blade razors that Tiger is pitching right now. (F*ck, I have a beard, why do I want a razor blade? Screw it, I'm still waiting for 6 blades.)
Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly and applying the wrong fix.
Until Intel unveils their version of HyperTransport, this will be more of the same.
You put a quad-core Xeon against a quad-core Opteron and under most conditions (besides CPU-only work) the Opteron will kill the Xeon.
Now, we'll have even more cycles we can't utilize, because of the old design of the system.
If you're going to do anything that uses both RAM and CPU (aka VMware hosts, which is what most big servers are used for these days) you'd better off with an Opteron.
I'd rather use a dual or quad socket Dual-Core Opteron than a dual or quad socket Quad-core Xeon.
- It's not the Macs I hate. It's Digg users. -
That's no different from the 486SXes, many of which were 486DX parts with the defective math coprocessor diked out. It's not very different from how the clock rate on every mainstream chip is determined by how many chips turn out to be stable at which speeds.
Gads, who on earth would run a 64-core Windows box?
The ABBYY OCR engine (Windows only) in any of its latest versions (either direct from ABBYY or OEM'd into someone else's product) will multithread during recognition -- one thread for each core. We currently use a dual quad-core Xeon Windows Server box and I wish I had more cores -- when you get a project to OCR 2.1 million docs in a timeframe of less than a few years, you will too. ;-)
ABBYY's own server-level product (Recognition Server) will span multiple boxes and use any designated cores available on those boxes -- and it scales linerally with the number of cores available (distributed or local). So yeah, there are still some Windows-only applications where a truly monster box would be great.
OCR is one of those apps where you can absolutely NEVER have enough resources for big jobs.
What's wrong with that. Intel has sold defective processors for years, either binning them at a lower clock speed or trimming out chunks of cache and selling them as Celerons. If it can serve a purpose, does the job you need to get done, and it's available cheap... I don't see a problem here.
640K should be enough for anybody.
Mada mada dane.
Now, how does my "six pack" seem to you?
Simple. He'll catch the black holes produced in ZPMs. They'll be released for civilian use by the time anything runs Crysis properly anyway.
But, can it run Windows Vista? Or how about running Duke Nukem Forever on top of Windows Vista? Or is that just wishful thinking?
ZPMs give off too much power for home use NAQUADAH REACTORs for that.
Again, this is a defective four core chip which you've been duped into purchasing.
In the industry, we call it a "reworked" part. It's not being "duped" if it costs less and does what it advertises.
By the way, your memory is almost certainly "defective" by your definition. Memory is reworked like crazy - loads of extra traces. And if it's REALLY bad, the top-tier guys sell it to discounters to sell as lower-capacity part.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
A mini-tower with a single Core 2 duo would be nice, in the $1000-$1400 range, Room for two drives, single DVD drive, and 4 GB RAM Mac would work. Maybe just three PCI slots, with one spaced apart from the others for larger video cards.
I drank what? -- Socrates
Can anybody explain me why AMD still has tops 1MB cache per core? And this is on Opterons. Normal AM/AM+ CPUs have only 512K cache per core. Intel now has 4MB of cache per core on its workstation CPUs.
I can not understand why AMD doesn't increase cache size, while it's obvious that cache helps tremendously on memory intensive operations. Smaller caches are not even offset by its integrated on CPU memory controller.
I'm planning upgrade and though I like AMD price/performance ratio, even for modest workstation Intel is better choice - simply because their CPUs have more cache.
All hope abandon ye who enter here.
Hmm, I'll humbly admit here on Slashdot--where knowledge truly equals power-- that I hadn't known that many multi-core chips were simply packaged together, not fabbed on the same die.
Seems like wire bonding and interconnect for a multi-die package would have to be very carefully done because of the clock speeds. When clocks go into the GHz region, that's the black magic RF domain where wires become effective antennae and all that. Doing traces on silicon allows a designer to route ground traces/pads around signal traces to mitigate traces "talking" to one another.
Yeah, ..., A friend of a friend of a friend's neighbour's teenage son has a pre-release Mac Pro unit with the new chip, and he says that he can finally run Vista with all the features activated!!
It's a bit troublesome to build a whole nuclear powerplant just to have it piffle out 350 watts. The bragging rights would be unbeatable though.
Why wait for 8 cores when you can get two 6 core chips in a package and have 12?
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
You're really being sold 3 tested and working cores. You're supposed to ignore failed core on the die. It has nothing to do with the 3 that do work.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
Sun has been 64-bit for well over a decade too. Sun had hyperthreading(SMT) before Intel too, and they could do 4-way SMT rather than Intel's weak 2-way. Sun has always been ahead of the curve and gets no credit for it. I guess it's because they are good with technology and bad at capitalizing on it (at least not as good at it as Intel)
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
Give me one of these running at 3.4ghz /w 6 cores, and it'll match my 3.4 v6. Now to integrate the two....
No, I didn't say it "feels faster." I said it's not easy to quantify, because if you benchmark a few apps or do a few little multithreaded tests, the Intels may be on top.
You have to actually put substantial load on these systems to see the benefit, and in a virtualized environment you see just that.
Hey, don't take my word for it. Look at the benchmarks for heavy load servers and shove it up your "single CPU's are more common because I have never done any work in the enterprise" ass.
- It's not the Macs I hate. It's Digg users. -
Those where the times when a puny 500MHz PowerPC could be as fast as a 2GHz x86 processor. When Motorola hadn't vanished into the mists of decaying memory (http://www.google.com/trends?q=motorola) and Freescale could have been a GNU project involving our scaly friends in some obscure way.
Oh well, Freescale should sue Intel for stolen glory or something like that. Also somebody should remind Intel/AMD that decent multiprocessors always come with 2^k cores and not any odd prime composites of cores.
After all, everybody knows that CELL is the new 7400. Oops, that one got 9 cores, maybe thats how it is nowadays. Well I could adjust to 3^k cores.
Anybody up for k=4?
My leet numerology skills allow me to predict that IBM will triumph over INTEL with a 81 core processor.
Je me souviens.
Only 4GB of ram max and PCI slots instead of PCI-Express? Why those limitations? Or are you thinking like Apple by intentionally crippling this thing so that they can sell more Mac Pros?
So, will it run raytraced (software-rendered) Quake 3?
Fuck everything, we're doing 6 cores!
It's sad when choosing an installation directory on your own qualifies you as an "advanced user."
For a lower priced/mid-range machine, Apple does tend to limit things. 4GB is the limit on MacBooks and iMacs. As for PCI, I meant PCI Express. I don't think anyone makes PCI cards any more.
Now that I think about it, an iMac, without built in graphics and 1-2 PCI-E slots (with horizontal adapter), and 4GB max RAM would be pretty nice. Put it in some kind of brushed aluminum pizza box and you have an instant classic.
I drank what? -- Socrates
Just, wtf was that ?
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]