Intel Gives More Details Six-Core Gulftown CPUs
In a press conference yesterday Intel offered a few more tidbits of information on the six-core Gulftown chips it plans to launch later this year.
Scheduled for release sometime in the first half of this year, Gulftown is aimed at high-end desktops and workstations. Intel yesterday offered some juicy deets on the Westmere chip, including that 1.17 billion transistors onto 240mm sq. die and carries 12MB in L3 and a thermal design power of 130W at 3.33GHz. But the part we're most excited about is improvements in power efficiency.
This is the first design that can do power gating with not just CPU cores, but also the "uncore" parts of the chip. Previously, power gating the L3 cache was not possible because all that core data needed to be stored somewhere after everything else was shut down. However, rather than saving core data in the L3 when it shuts off, Intel has added a dedicated SRAM to store core data and enable Westmere 6C to power gate the L3 cache.
Other information revealed yesterday is that Gulftown will be sold under the Core i7 brand, will be capable of running 12 threads at once, and will not include integrated graphics. Unfortunately, the folks at Intel kept it zipped in terms of clock speeds
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Am very interested in the new power saving features.
If they can do for CPU's what AMD did with GFx cards they will save people a lot of money - making their new CPU's a very tempting option!
"and will not include integrated graphics."
Phew!
Clock speeds eh? The i7 980X is at 3.33GHz as the article states, and isn't there a rumoured non-EE i7 990 or something that's 3.2GHz for about $700?
"Intel yesterday offered some juicy deets on the Westmere chip, including that 1.17 billion transistors onto 240mm sq. die and carries 12MB in L3 and a thermal design power of 130W at 3.33GHz. "
"Unfortunately, the folks at Intel kept it zipped in terms of clock speeds "
good job there toms
I think its meant to debut at rather higher speeds than 3.33GHz...?
Hope I am not wrong on this one
I think its meant to debut at rather higher speeds than 3.33GHz...?
Doubtful - as far as I can recall Intel have only ever exceeded 3.33GHz stock once, and that was a 3.4GHz P4 Prescott. Intel may well intend for the Gulftown silicon to go higher, but they'll stock it to 3.33GHz with an unlocked multi and let everybody cream their pants at the "overclocking potential".