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."

Comments

Yes! It should totally be a power of two.

[Joce640k]

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.

Re:Base 2

[Anonymous Coward]

6 = 8 - 2 broken cores ?

It has six cores...

[halcyon1234]

... and a moisturizer strip for a cool, refreshing finish.

Re:Base 2

[davidbrit2]

Hey, 6 is a power of 2. It's 2^2.585, to be inexact.

Wattage

[locster]

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.

Re:Specs?

[morgan_greywolf]

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.

And before anyone says...."yeah, but Linux/Mac OS X supports multi-cores out of the box".... Yes, yes it does. However, most of the applications don't actually benefit much from SMP by themselves. A few things like video conversion, but, for the most part, office suites, e-mail user agents, etc., do not actually benefit directly from SMP.

OTOH, why should they? Any processor made within the last five years is good enough for that stuff.

Re:Base 2

[Anonymous Coward]

2^(log2(6)) to be exact.

Re:And we're now tuesday

[sgbett]

http://www.apple.com/uk/imac/

Hmm, the page you're looking for can't be found.

interesting.

Re:Base 2

[Yvan256]

Pentium 1 user, aren't you?

Re:And we're now tuesday

[Trashman]

The article from Ars technica says:

"Unlike the 65nm, quad-core Tukwila, Dunnington is produced on Intel's 45nm process. This means that Dunnington uses less power, and indeed, the top-end, 2.66GHz SKU has a 130W TDP (compare Tukwila's 170W TDP). The 2.4GHz part boasts a 90W TDP, and there's a 2.13GHz part that runs at a relatively cool 65W."

That's already the case.

[DrYak]

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)