Intel Details Upcoming Gulftown Six-Core Processor

MojoKid writes "With the International Solid-State Circuits Conference less than a week away, Intel has released additional details on its upcoming hexa-core desktop CPU, next gen mobile, and dual-core Westmere processors. Much of the dual-core data was revealed last month when Intel unveiled their Clarkdale architecture. However, when Intel set its internal goals for what its calling Westmere 6C, the company aimed to boost both core and cache count by 50 percent without increasing the processor's thermal envelope. Westmere 6C (codename Gulftown) is a native six-core chip. Intel has crammed 1.17 billion transistors into a die that's approximately 240mm sq. The new chip carries 12MB up L3 (up from Nehalem's 8MB) and a TDP of 130W at 3.33GHz. In addition, Intel has built in AES encryption instruction decode support as well as a number of improvements to Gulftown's power consumption, especially in idle sleep states."

Comments

DRM Support

[slashqwerty]

In addition, Intel has built in AES encryption instruction decode support

You can bet the sole reason for including this was to support DRM-protected content.

Re:Intel announces 6 cores, 6 months after AMD.. y

[CajunArson]

Wow... looks like the AMD fanboys are modding up anything anti-Intel today!
So for the past 5 years it's been a big deal to improve power consumption and everyone in the industry has known this... so all of the sudden Intel is "copying" AMD by making a CPU that fits into existing power envelopes on existing platforms???? The only "copying" going on here is marketing BS. Oh since AMD's own 6-core server CPU's came out after Intel's (Dunnington was out first) and AMD's 6 core desktop parts will come out after Gulftown will you say "yawn, AMD is just copying Intel's idea"? Somehow I think not.

    Face it, AMD on the CPU side only beats the Core 2 by clocking higher and selling at a loss right now. Bulldozer had better beat the ever loving crap out of Westmere because by the time it finally arrives late next year it's going to have to contend with Sandy Bridge.
The only bright spot at AMD is the graphics division... which AMD just bought for way too much money and likely will require massive profits for the next 10 years to recoup the takeover prices.