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Intel Core I7 Launched, Nehalem and X58 Tested
MojoKid writes "Today marks the official launch of
Intel's new Core i7 processor, the most major overhaul of Intel's core processor architecture since the release of their Core 2
design. As has been reported, the Core i7 is a major departure from
Intel's aging Front Side Bus architecture of old, now replaced by
Intel's QPI (Quick Path Interconnect) serial links. This 20 lane
bi-directional (40 lanes total) point-to-point connection provides 6.4 GT/s of
bandwidth and scalability for future multi-socket designs as well. In
addition, the Core i7 now has an integrated triple channel memory controller
offering over 3X the bandwidth of the previous Core 2 architecture with
DDR3 system memory. Though the product is set to ship in volume later this
month,
the early benchmark numbers show Intel's new chip is markedly faster
clock-for-clock versus their previous generation CPU and much faster than
anything AMD has out currently."
It's not out until I can buy one from Newegg.
It's not big and it's not clever. I like my bytes and bits, thank you very much.
Squirrel!
AMD was brave enough to quit using FSBs in PC CPUs and replaced them with HyperTransport. Years later, Intel also says goodbye to FSBs and uses a similar technology. The innovator took all the costs, and now someone with more resources gets the marketshare. After all, the consumers only want a speedy CPU, they don't care who was the innovator, and speedy CPUs are more readily available by whoever has the most resources to build them. It is, therefore, seen that being the innovator is not always a smart movement in the business chessboard, at least not if you cannot build your innovation in sufficient quantity. That said, I congratulate Intel for finally bringing the cores closer to the RAM, which is a much better technical solution than using an FSB. They should, perhaps, have done that much earlier.