main

Sun leaks 6-core Intel processor details

Michael Stanclift   via Daily Tech on 26 February 2008 - 23:50 · 4 comments & 5019 views

Advertisement (Why?)
Late last month in Austria, Intel presented Sun with roadmaps discussing details of its upcoming server platforms, including the fairly secret Xeon Dunnington and Nehalem architectures. Unfortunately for some, this presentation ended up on Sun's public web server over the weekend.

Dunnington, Intel's 45nm six-core Xeon processor from the Penryn family, will succeed the Xeon Tigerton processor. Whereas Tigerton is essentially two 65nm Core 2 Duo processors fused on one package, Dunnington will be Intel's first Core 2 Duo processor with three dual-core banks. Dunnington includes 16MB of L3 cache shared by all six processors. Each pair of cores can also access 3MB of local L2 cache. The end result is a design very similar to the AMD Barcelona quad-core processor; however, each Barcelona core contains 512KB L2 cache, whereas Dunnington cores share L2 cache in pairs.

To sweeten the deal, all Dunnington processors will be pin-compatible with Intel Tigerton processors, and work with the existing Clarksboro chipset. Intel's slide claims this processor will launch in the second half of 2008 -- a figure consistent with previous roadmaps from the company.

Post a comment · Send to friend Comments · There are 4 additional comments
(1 reply) #1 Swordnyx on 27 Feb 2008 - 02:05
So? Intel said it will have 80 cores by 2011, and I'll be waiting.
#1.1 RAID 0 on 27 Feb 2008 - 06:36
No kidding. I SO want to play with that kinda power.



#2 abshack on 27 Feb 2008 - 18:46
:o ... if the cores are running at 3.2 ghz or higher, it'll be like having a PS3 for a server..
#3 Narlzac85 on 29 Feb 2008 - 11:39
hmmm, off-chip L3...plus 3 separate CPU dies intercommunicating over the FSB...no wonder they needed 1600MHz FSB... Maybe they should focus on catching up with hypertransport and get their integrated memory controller done instead of this.

Commenting has either been disabled on this article or you are not logged in. Click here to login or register, its free!

Note: Anonymous commenting is disabled in order to keep the quality of responses to a high standard.

Advertisement (Why?)