Intel on Tuesday disclosed details of its upcoming eight-core server processor that the chipmaker hopes will coax large companies from servers using the competing RISC design.
Intel plans to begin production on the new chip, code-named Nehalem-EX, in the second half of the year. Computer systems leveraging the technology are expected early next year.
Nehalem-EX is based on the same underlying technology as the Core i7 and the Xeon 5500 series, but it’s supercharged in almost every way. Intel has outfitted it with eight cores, 16 threads, 24MB of shared cache, four QuickPath links, four memory channels, and support for up to 16 memory modules per socket (with the help of external Intel Scalable Memory Buffer chips). Most impressively, Intel has crammed all of the above into a single, massive die made up of 2.3 billion transistors. Yikes.
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