Intel's 6-Core CPU Possibly Delayed

Looks as though Intel's "Gulftown" processor has seen a slight delay, now pushed back from its original Q4 2009 / Q1 2010 ship date.

Hardware site HKEPC is reporting that information provided by a "Taiwan motherboard entrepreneur"--Intel's Gulftown processor will arrive on the market sometime around Q2 2010. The processor was originally expected to appear in Q4 2009 / Q1 2010 but now seems to be pushed back (if the information is correct). The upcoming 32nm processor is actually the successor to the Bloomfield core that currently serves the Core i7 920, 940, and 965 CPUs, and when released, Gulftown will aim towards the high-end desktop and DP server markets.

As part of the follow-up to the Westmere-based Core i7 family, the Gulftown processor will come packed with six cores, Hyper-Threading technology activated allowing it the ability to process 12 threads at one time.  Gulftown will also be compatible with the LGA 1366 socket, the Intel X58 chipset, and feature a TDP of 130W. When it eventually arrives, Gulftown will support 2x QPI (Intel's QuickPath Interconnect), 3x DDR3 800-1066 and 12 MB of shared L3 cache.

Additionally, Gulftown will also feature a new set of instructions that supposedly gives over 3x the encryption and decryption rate of AES processes than previous CPUs. This means that Gulftown can perform hardware-accelerated encryption, providing not only faster execution, but protection against software targeted attacks. The processor will also reduce latency in virtualization transition as well thanks to more hardware-based virtualization extensions.