In a series of reviews published today, Intel revealed the prices and clock speeds for the first line of processors that are built on the new Nehalem microarchitecture. The first of these chips, called the Intel Core i7, are slated for release later in November and these chips are designed for gaming machines and PC enthusiasts. The first Intel Core i7 processors will have speeds ranging from 2.66GHz to 3.20GHz and prices starting at about $300.
Prices and clock speeds of
the
first processors built on Intel's new Nehalem microarchitecture have now
been published in several online reviews as the chip giant prepares to
launch
the first of these new chips later in November.
In a number of reviews published Nov. 3, including pieces in
Tom's Hardware and
ExtremeTech, the first of these new
Intel processors, called the Intel Core i7, will have clock speeds starting at
2.66GHz and prices that begin at about $300. (The prices are calculated in
quantities of 1,000 units.)
Intel
has already announced that the first of these Core i7 processors is scheduled for release later this month, which allows Intel to take advantage of
the holiday shopping season. The first chips based on
the Intel Nehalem architecture are designed for gaming desktops and for PC
enthusiasts.
In a few weeks,
Intel
will release three Core i7 processors with clock speeds of 2.66GHz, 2.93GHz and
3.20GHz. The prices will range from $284 on the low end to $562 for a mid-range
processors and $999 on the high end. Some of the reviews noted that since the
Core i7 processors are built on new architecture, PCs will require new
motherboards and users will likely have to upgrade the PC's memory to support
newer DDR3 (double data rate 3) memory.
For business buyers and the enterprise, the roll out of
these three Intel Core i7 processors offers a window into the other types of
processors Intel will offer later this year and into 2009. At its Developer
Forum in August,
Intel
Senior Vice President Pat Gelsinger detailed a strategy that will allow the
company to gradually bring new processors into the market during the course
of the next 12 months.
After the Core i7 processors, Intel will offers
Nehalem-based processors for workstations and single-socket server systems.
Other chips for two-socket servers and high-performance computing will follow.
It has been two years since Intel offered new
microarchitecture and the company's engineers have made a number of
improvements. The first, and most obvious, is the manufacturing process. The
new Nehalem-based processors are built on 45-nanometer manufacturing as opposed
to the older, 65-nm process. The new processors reviewed Monday have four
processing cores and share 8MB of L3 cache.
One of the most significant improvements with Nehalem is the use of an
integrated memory controller. The memory controller, which is the part of the
CPU that communicates with the DDR memory
chips, is now integrated into the processor die itself, which eliminates the
traditional FSB (front side bus). This type of integration will allow for
greater levels of performance without increasing the clock speed of the
processor, which should also keep the thermal envelope the same as the previous
generation.
In the reviews, the three Intel Core i7 processors have thermal envelopes of
130 watts each.
Advanced
Micro Devices has manufactured chips with an integrated memory controller
for a number of years.
Nehalem will allow Intel to create processors that can scale from two to
eight cores.
Each core supports two instructional threads that will then allow the chips
to perform several tasks simultaneously. Finally, Intel will also introduce a
technology called QuickPath, a high-speed chip-to-chip interconnect technology
that will allow the Nehalem family of processors to connect to another
component or another chip on the motherboard.
While Nehalem is one of the more significant
announcements Intel has made this year, the company is already focusing on
2009. At a conference in December,
Intel
will begin talking about its next generation of processors build on 32-nm manufacturing.
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