With the 2006 release of the Core 2 Duo and its counterparts, Intel adopted what they call the “Tick-Tock” approach to CPU development. Intel pledged to operate on a two year engineering cycle which would shrink the die of an existing chip within the first year and debut an entirely new architecture in the second. Thus far Intel has upheld their schedule, shrinking the 2006 Conroe for the 45nm Penryn family in 2007. If Intel is on track, and we have great reason to believe that they are, we should see the Nehalem family introduced at the end of this year.
As the first new architecture in two years, the industry is eagerly awaiting to see what the chip has in store. Boasting an integrated memory controller, a new bus architecture, and the return of hyperthreading, the chip will not only be blisteringly fast, but close the few remaining gaps between Intel and AMD. As we prepare for the impending release of the Nehalem family, let’s take a look at why it’s going to be a great time for enthusiasts
Architecture
Family Name: Nehalem
Retail Name: Core i7
Socket: LGA1366
Core Codenames:
- Beckton: MP Server. Bringing up the ultra-expensive end of the family, these chips are destined for 4P+ servers or whatever successor to the Skulltrail Intel is concocting.
- Gainestown: Workstation. Probably carrying the Xeon name, these will be business-certified chips for single or dual-processor applications.
- Bloomfield: Desktop. Will adopt the role that the Conroe once played as the cornerstone of the new processor family. This will be the core that everyone will want.
- Lynnfield: Budget Desktop. With reduced memory channels and the forfeiture of the new bus architecture, these chips won’t be worth it for the enthusiast, but won’t be awful like the Havendale.
- Clarksfield: Mobile. Powering Intel’s strategy in the mobile market, the Clarksfield will service all levels of performance. From mainstream to enthusiast, variations in clock speed will set the price barriers.
- Havendale: Cheapskate Desktop. This is the replacement for that creepy Pentium revival Intel has been tossing about. Lower than low. More terrible than terrible. You’d rather gargle bleach than get anchored to one of these.
Manufacturing: 45nm High-K at Fab D1D (Oregon, USA), Fab 32 (Arizona, USA), and Fab 28 (Kiryat-Gatt, Israel).
Cores: 2, 4 or 8. While the Beckton will have eight physical cores and the Havendale must be content with two, other entries to the Nehalem family will arrive with four.
Memory: Tri-Channel DDR3 800/1066/1333/1600 (Gainestown, enthusiast Bloomfield), Dual-Channel 800/1066/1333 DDR3 (Budget Bloomfield, Lynnfield, Clarksfield, Havendale), Quad-Channel FB-DIMM2 (Beckton).
Bus Architecture: 6.4GT/s QPI (Bloomfield Extreme, Beckton, Gainestown), 4.8GT/s QPI (Enthusiast Bloomfield), 4x/2x DMI & PCI-Ex 2.0 (Lynnfield, Clarksfield, Havendale).
Cache: 64k L1, 256k L2, 2-3MB L3 per core with shared interfacing. Cache is expected to vary based on the market needs.
Transistor Count: 731 million for quad core models.
QuickPath Interconnect
As the official working name for the formerly-titled Common Systems Interface, QPI is Intel’s response to AMD’s sensational Hypertransport bus. Despite advancements on the microarchitecture front, Intel’s marriage to the frontside bus has continued to hamper their performance. The QPI architecture will allow Intel to connect tri- or even quad-channel memory directly to the Nehalem’s integrated memory controller. In addition, QPI will also allow inter-device bandwidth of up to 16GB/s bi-directionally.
It is strongly suspected that Intel’s memory bandwidth, long close to AMD despite suffering the FSB, is quickly going to gain the speed crown. Everyone should be excited about Intel adopting QPI.
When the Intel X58 chipset goes live, the northbridge will be abolished and see the southbridge adopt the platform controller hub (PCH) model. Currently known as Ibexpeak, the PCH will provide support for the chips that do not have QPI support.
Hyperthreading
While many have unhappy memories of Hyperthreading, HT’s untimely demise is owed entirely to the atrocity that was the Pentium 4. Conceived as a compensation to keep Netburst’s absurdly long pipeline filled with work, HT could never shine because it was hamstrung by a bad architecture. It’s a fantastic technology that allows one execution engine to process two threads simultaneously. Hyperthreading alone can improve the throughput of a chip by up to 30%, all while keeping the footprint of the chip down and keeping the dissipation/consumption way down.
It is believed that the Nehalem’s pipeline is slightly longer than today’s Penryn, but not so long as to be unwieldy. Combining hyperthreading with an architecture where it can shine will mean big news for throughput-hungry applications like rendering and encoding.
Benchmarks
It is said that the Nehalem is up to 30% faster than Penryn clock for clock. Numerous optimizations to the core, in addition to the obvious ones, have made it blisteringly fast. Early benchmarks pegged an artificially-limited 2.66GHz Nehalem with broken tri-channel support to be faster than a fully-functional 3.2GHZ Skulltrail system. So put your peepers on some of these benchies:
- Anandtech goes to town with the broken Nehalem.
- Sketchy SuperPi benchmarking.
- Nehalem vs. AMD Shanghai in SPEC performance.
- Tomshardware Taiwan goes nuts with a Nehalem.
Pricing
Everyone wants to know what the new chips are going to cost, and we’ve some idea of that. Clearly the Extreme Edition Bloomfield chips are going to be at or north of $1000 per unit, but other models are said to be much more reasonable.
Intel Core i7-965 Extreme Edition:
- 3.2GHz Bloomfield XE
- Quad core
- HT-enabled
- 6.4GT/s QPI bus
- Tri-channel DDR3 support
- 8MB L3
- Product Code BX80601965
- $1,412 USD
Intel Core i7-940:
- 2.93GHz Bloomfield
- Quad core
- HT-enabled
- 4.8GT/s QPI bus
- Tri-channel DDR3 support
- 8MB L3 Cache
- Product Code BX80601940
- $720 USD
Intel Core i7-920:
- 2.66GHz Bloomfield
- Quad core
- HT-enabled
- 4.8GT/s QPI bus
- Tri-channel DDR3 support
- 8MB L3 Cache
- Product Code BX80601920
- $367 USD
Motherboards
Motherboards for the LGA1366 Nehalem will be running Intel’s new X58 chipset at the outset. The X58, code-named Tylersburg, will employ the ICH10 southbridge with the PCH model and is reported to support SLI and Crossfire out of the box. There are numerous boards being readied with the X58 badge, so take a look:
- Gigabyte GA-S36-Extreme Edition
- Foxconn Reference X58
- Asus P6T Deluxe
- Asus, MSI, ABIT and Gigabyte boards
- MSI Eclipse
- DFI X58 LanParty UT
Problems
There’s one tiny, teensy little problem with today’s Nehalem: All that high-performance DDR3 on the market will more or less deep six the Nehalem.
While the JEDEC specification calls for voltages no greater than 1.5v, overclocking-happy memory manufacturers have been happy to push 1.8 – 2.1v for the new DDR3 standard. Voltages at these levels, now so closely tied to the chip, are apparently enough to permanently damage the CPU. Vendors are hustling to revamp and recertify their tri-channel DDR3 packages.
Wrapup
As Icrontic prepares for the impending release of the Nehalem, rest assured that you can count on us to deliver some of the finest and most comprehensive coverage on the internet. If you’re interested in any additional information, don’t hesitate to shoot an email to ROBERT [AT] ICRONTIC [DOT] COM where we will do our best to come up with the goods.
Exciting times for enthusiasts everywhere! It’s always good when a new architecture is released.
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