Nehalem - Everything You Need to Know about Intel's New Architecture
by Anand Lal Shimpi on November 3, 2008 1:00 PM EST- Posted in
- CPUs
Final Words
Nehalem was a key focus at this year’s IDF, and in the coming months we should see its availability in the market. You’ll need a new motherboard and CPU, and maybe even new memory, but if you’re running well threaded applications Nehalem won’t disappoint.
Designed from the start to really tackle Intel’s weaknesses in the server market, it makes sense why the first Nehalem scheduled to launch is the high end, quad-core, dual QPI, triple-channel version. The overall architecture is very reminiscent of Barcelona, which does lend credibility to AMD’s direction with its latest core - at least in the enterprise space.
Thanks to the past few years of multi-core development on the desktop, Nehalem should see some impressive gains there as well - again from threaded applications.
The biggest changes with Nehalem are actually the ones that took place behind the scenes. The fundamental changes in design decisions requiring that each expenditure of additional power come at dramatic corresponding increase in performance, is a huge step for Intel. It’s the same design mentality used on the lowest power Intel cores (Atom), which is impressive for Intel’s highest performing Nehalem cores.
We can’t help but be excited about Nehalem as the first tock since the Core 2 processor arrived, but we do wonder what’s next. Much of the performance gains with Nehalem are due to increases in bandwidth and HT, we’ll have to wait two more years to find out what Intel can do to surprise us once more. As Pat Gelsinger told me when AMD integrated the memory controller, he said you can only do that once - what do you do to improve performance next?
While Larrabee will be the focus of Intel’s attention in 2009, Sandy Bridge in 2010 is the next tock to look forward to. Until then, Nehalem should do wonders for Intel’s competitiveness in the enterprise market, and actually be a worthy successor to Conroe on the desktop.
The only other concern I have about Nehalem is how things will play out with the two-channel DDR3 versions of the chip. They will require a different socket and as we saw in the days of Socket-940/939/754 with AMD’s K8, it can easily be a painful process. I do hope that Intel has learned from AMD’s early issues with platforms and K8, it would be a shame if initial Nehalem adopters were eventually left out in the cold. If Intel does launch an affordable 2.66GHz quad-core part, I don’t expect that the enthusiast market will be left out but I’m not much of a fortune teller.
So there you have it, a more complete look at Nehalem - the only thing we’re missing is a full performance review. Intel launches in Q4 of this year, so you know when to expect one...
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qurious69ss - Friday, August 22, 2008 - link
You sound like one of those sad fanboys from amdzone. Tell dimentia to get a life.X1REME - Friday, August 22, 2008 - link
wow, this whole cpu is a copy of a amd cpu and you expect amd fan boys to not get amd with you, secondly this fantasy is baseless until you can compare it to an offering from the AMD team (Shanghai & Deneb). AMD is still KING with there OPTERON and most likely will be in the future with there new cpu coming soon for the server and also for the desktop.DigitalFreak - Friday, August 22, 2008 - link
Learn to spell, you goober.X1REME - Friday, August 22, 2008 - link
OK DORK, am sure you have never made a mistake (there=their) Duh. I bet your some kid all hyped up for the i7 who wishes Xmas comes early lol. Anyway it’s not a desktop chip, it’s a sever chip DUH. It’s meant to compete with the AMD Opteron chip (the best). Although Opteron will lose its crown, it won’t be to i7 but to Shanghai (AMD new latest and greatest). And like I said b4, Deneb will clear anything up out of place.The reason amd does not grab a microphone and star shouting at the top of their voice is because amd doesn't have the resources and money in comparison with Intel. If it reveals too much about its future strategy and Intel likes that strategy (like the Opteron, HT, On-board mem etc) there is a big theoretical chance that Intel could take this idea and deliver a product well before AMD. So it’s not over until amd says its.
snakeoil - Thursday, August 21, 2008 - link
nehalem fails,it was supposed to be superior to core 2, intel was against the wall this time, why?, because, the old front bus architecture was lagging more more in the server arena and becoming a bottleneck ,compared to hypertransport, so intel is forced to abandon the front side bus, but the strong point of core 2 is that because you don't have and integrated memory controller you can stuff the processor with a huge L2 cache.so, nehalem sucks in gaming,there is no way that the enthusiast is going to pay more for a processor that produce less fps that they actually have.
and the hyperthreading is a risky move, hypertrheading is known por being power hungry, and although produce gains in some applications,some servers applications actually runs slower, so in many cases the old hyperthreading had to be disabled.
nehalem is crippled for the enthusiast,and the regular user.
nuff said.
AssBall - Saturday, August 23, 2008 - link
You musta missed where Anand says several times its not intended for better gaming? It will be significantly faster than Penryn for multithreaded applications. I guess I don't see how this makes it "fail". Maybe in your fantasy world where 90% of the CPU market are "enthusiasts".snakeoil - Saturday, August 23, 2008 - link
enthusiasts drive the market you fruityassUnlimitedInternets36 - Saturday, August 23, 2008 - link
LOL this year Satan err Santa is going to take away your PC because you don't deserve to have one anymore You Jaded nerd.Gasaraki88 - Friday, August 22, 2008 - link
Thanks! I never knew there was a expert on CPU design in the house. I've learn so much from your well researched, tested and thought out comment...pool1892 - Friday, August 22, 2008 - link
first of all the enthusiast market is a very tiny niche, it would not kill intel if you were right.but you are not. the L2 of penryn (and banias) is much more like the nehalem L3 than the nehalem L2. and if you have a single threaded game it now has 8mb at similar latencies, but with a second buffer, the 256k L2, and a MUCH smaller cache miss penalty.
concerning hyperthreading: please read the article first. nehalem switches off what it does not need, powerwise. and about fiftytwo other very vaild arguments.