"Nehalem" Taped-out and Running Windows

[SRTDodge05]

Intel's largest architecture overhaul in decades is less than a year away

It wasn't that long ago that predictions of doom and gloom pinned Intel between a rock and a hard place. The company's NetBurst architecture didn't scale and its Itanium architecture didn't sell; it looked as if for the first time in history, Moore's Law was in serious jeopardy.

All that changed, to some extent on a whim, with the Israeli-developed mobile processors. The mobile Core architecture would eventually replace Intel's entire NetBurst family, and the company vowed a new development cycle that would assure the company never pigeonholed itself in the same manner again: Intel's "tick-tock" philosophy. The company will replace its processor node every two years, followed by a new architecture design every other year on the mature processor node.

Nehalem chief architect, Glen Hinton, tells DailyTech the philosophy behind 731 million transistor, 45nm Nehalem is an extension of the approach to Penryn and 65nm Core 2 Duo processors: a universal, robust core design that will scale from mobile to server applications.

http://www.dailytech.com/Nehalem+Tap...rticle8927.htm

[k0NG0]

"Tick-tock" is a stupefyingly boring name for a philosophy. Especially from the company that brought us NetBurst, QuickPath, Ultra-this and Super-that...

Pendulum Power!

[XJ.]

So in a little over a year, we'll have an 8 core cpu running 16 threads! Man, even the 4 core (731m trans) version with 8 threads will be 'overkill' for the consumer market!

Of course, even if the second logical thread only runs at 50% of the performance of the first logical thread - it will be a monster folder - the equivalent of 3 dual core Penryns!!!

[SRTDodge05]

8 Core, im still in need of software that supports my quad core.

[k0NG0]

Originally Posted by XJ.

So in a little over a year, we'll have an 8 core cpu running 16 threads! Man, even the 4 core (731m trans) version with 8 threads will be 'overkill' for the consumer market!

Of course, even if the second logical thread only runs at 50% of the performance of the first logical thread - it will be a monster folder - the equivalent of 3 dual core Penryns!!!

Though for the server market, where you can push for 100% usage with virtualization, it will be perfect. That the cores trickle down to the desktop market is almost a side-effect these days. You push as few products as possible through your factories to keep costs down, and you make the big money on the server side.

I'm the most interested in the laptop end these days. The INQ showed a prototype CPU that ran with the cooling fan off. Which is pretty cool, in more ways than one. A heavily clock-gated dual-core with SMT and deep sleep states as well as quick recovery can be very power efficient yet fast, especially at 45nm. A dual-core faster than the Core 2 at 15-20W should be doable. I want a desktop with that chip. Possibly an iMac.