Intel discovered nuclear secrets

Pat Gelsinger (Pat Gelsinger) shows the first substrate with an eight-processor desktop Nehalem

Intel has announced plans to produce multi-core processors up to the end of 2009. This dual-core chips Atom, six-core Xeon processors and eight-core Nehalem. In addition, it confirmed the release of the next year the first Nehalem processors for laptops.

Intel plans to release the first dual-core Atom processor next month. It will be designed for nettops - desktop PCs, designed mainly for Internet access. This is related by the official representatives of Intel's Developer Forum IDF, which opened on August 19 and will continue till 21 of the month in San Francisco, California.

Here, vice president of Intel and general manager, Intel Digital Enterprise Group Pat Gelsinger (Pat Gelsinger) demonstrated the first substrate with an eight desktop processors Nehalem, spoke about the possibilities of these processors, and confirmed plans to release mobile processors with the same architecture.

Most of the speech was devoted to the Nehalem architecture, and in particular, technology Turbo Mode, as it is part of. Turbo Mode technology is a switch that can disconnect the CPU core idle, and the remaining included kernel used more efficiently. According to Gelsinger, the technology will be implemented in desktop and mobile Nehalem processors, and is vital to the further increase in the number of cores.

Power management will carry out a special controller designed for this purpose, and a built-in processor. Only this one module consists of 1 million. Transistors. It does not require the intervention of the operating system and decides when and how the kernel is shut down, and what - to include. If the controller detects that one of the cores has a low load, its task can be distributed to other nuclei. According to engineers, it is better when the core function in pairs - so the processor is operating most efficiently.

Other features of the new microprocessor architecture is the built-in controller memory and the development of QuickPath, speeding up the passage of signals between electronic components. Nehalem processors will be equipped with the technology VT-d, due to which the virtual machines that are running on computers with Nehalem, will run twice as fast. VMware is planning to add support for this feature in the products 2009 The new chips provide 3 times more bandwidth memory and twice the rate calculated 3D-graphics compared to today's solutions.

The first to go on sale processors for desktop user systems Core i7 and server processors, codenamed Nehalem-EP. In the 2nd half of 2009 will be announced the first eight-processor Nehalem-EX, desktop processors codenamed Havendale and Lynnfield processors and mobile Auburndale and Clarksfield. The line will include not only the four- and eight-core model, but also dual.

In addition, in September 2008, the company is going to announce a six-core Dunnington processors for servers, which will be the latest addition to the family of processors on the Penryn architecture before moving to Nehalem. This processor Intel Xeon X7460 with six cores and 16 MB cache in the third level has already set a record performance in a series of tests on the servers of IBM.