November 3rd, 2008

Intel's Core i7 gets put to the test

Posted by John Morris @ 11:21 am

Categories: AMD, Desktops, Intel, Semiconductor architecture, multicore processors, notebooks, quad-core processors

Tags: Desktop, Advanced Micro Devices Inc., Intel Core Microarchitecture, Core, Processors, Semiconductors, Hardware, Components, John Morris

Intel won’t announce its new Core i7 chips until later this month, but the first real reviews are popping up all over the place today. Based on the early previews, I expected to see good numbers and Core i7, formerly known as Nehalem, delivers.

These first Core i7s are Bloomfield processors designed for high-end desktops. There are three versions corresponding to different market segments: the 3.2GHz Core i7 965 Extreme Edition ($999), 2.93GHz Core i7 940 ($562) performance part, and the more mainstream 2.66GHz Core i7 920 ($284).

The new Core i7s are all quad-core processors (four cores on a single die) and each core can handle two threads. They also have an integrated memory controller and a new three-level cache, including an 8MB shared L3 cache. All of that adds up to a relatively hefty chip with 731 million transistors and a die size of 263 square millimeters. By comparison, a dual-core Penryn Core 2 Duo, which uses the same 45nm process technology, has 410 million transistors and measures 107 square millimeters. AMD’s current quad-core Phenoms–a more accurate comparison since they have four cores and a similar architecture–are even larger at 283 square millimeters, but it is still manufactured at 65nm. AMD’s 45nm Shanghai server processors–also expected later this month–will reportedly be nearly identical in size to Nehalem.

Though it is based on the same process as Penryn, the list of new features is long. Core i7s have three memory channels that support 1,066MHz DDR3; a new high-speed system bus, Quick Path Interconnect (QPI), that connects the processors to other system components (and to one another in multi-socket systems); a new socket; a new supporting chipset (the X58); more sophisticated power management features; a Turbo Mode that transparently pushes more power to the active core when running single-threaded applications; and new SSE instructions.

The results look very good. The Core i7 is the fastest desktop processor across the board on mainstream applications, multimedia tests, games and workstation applications. It looks like the second time’s the charm for Hyper Threading since the performance is especially impressive on applications that can take advantage of simultaneous multi-threading such as video encoding, 3D graphics rendering, and file compression and encryption. On some tests, the sub-$300 Core i7 920 outperformed the current Penryn 3.2GHz Core 2 Extreme QX9770, which sells for $1,399. The current Penryns were already faster than AMD’s fastest quad-core, the 2.6GHz Phenom X4 9950 BE, and Core i7 pads Intel’s lead. Shanghai should close the gap a bit, but at this point it’s hard to see how AMD can catch up anytime soon.

For now, the Core i7 and X58 are strictly for high-priced desktops, but that will soon change. Next year Intel will release server versions, currently known as Nehalem-EX, and eventually more quad-core and dual-core versions for both desktops and laptops. By late 2009, some desktop and mobile packages will also include integrated graphics processing units.

Intel Core i7 reviews coverage:

• Intel Core i7-965 Extreme Edition [CNET Reviews]
• Intel’s Core i7 processors: Nehalem arrives with a splash [The Tech Report]
• Intel Core i7 Review: Nehalem Gets Real [ExtremeTech]
• Intel’s Core i7 920, 945 & 965 processors [bit-tech.net]
• Intel Core i7 ‘Nehalem’ processor and X58 chipset [The Register Hardware]
• First Look: Intel’s Nehalem Smashes Performance Thresholds [ChannelWeb]
• Falcon Northwest Mach V [PC Magazine]

October 11th, 2008

Report: Three Intel Nehalems in November

Posted by John Morris @ 5:40 am

Categories: AMD, Desktops, Intel, Semiconductor architecture, dual-core processors, multicore processors, notebooks, quad-core processors, semiconductors

Tags: Desktop, Mobile, Intel Corp., Chip, Nehalem, Server Processor, Chipsets, Semiconductors, Processors, Network Technology

Intel will launch its first three Nehalem processors on November 17, according to a report on the site Expreview.com. These Bloomfield high-end chips will include the 3.2 GHz Core i7-965XE ($999), 2.93GHz Core i7-940 ($562) and 2.66GHz Core i7-920 ($284).

Nehalem is manufactured using the same 45nm process as current desktop and mobile chips, but it has a new design or microarchitecture. I’ve written previously about some of the new features in Nehalem.

Next year Intel will release mainstream desktop processors, as well as mobile and server versions of Nehalem. Like the Core i7, the Lynnfield desktop and Clarksfield mobile processors will use a separate GPU; the Havendale desktop and Auburndale mobile version will integrate a GPU in the processor package, thought it will also work with a separate GPU. The Lynnfield and Clarksfield processors will have four cores, while Havendale and Auburndale will be dual-core chips. The server processors are currently referred to as Nehalem-EX.

Desktops PCs with these first Core i7 chips will also have new, high-end motherboards based on the Intel X58 (or Tylersburg) chipset. Even though it has several new features such as integrated memory controller and Quick Path Interconnect, the X58 platform will still use a chipset that consists of two separate chips–like current systems that have a Northbridge and Southbridge. Next year’s Ibex Peak (for Lynnfield and Havendale desktop chips) and Ibex Peak-M (for the Clarksfield and Auburndale laptop chips) chipset will in fact be a single chip–or a two-chip solution if you count the processor.

The details on the X58 platform have been slowly leaking out since the Computex tradeshow last June where motherboard makers show off their products. Several enthusiast sites such as Anandtech and Tom’s Hardware have posted previews, but we’ve yet to see any real performance results.

AMD is set to launch its first 45nm processors (code-named Shanghai) sometime this quarter. As with Barcelona, the first versions will be server processors followed by desktop parts most likely in early 2009. The new 45nm process should help AMD reach high frequencies (and cut manufacturing costs), but there’s a big gap between the current 2.6GHz Phenom X4 9550 and a possible 3.2GHz Intel Core i7-965XE, so it seems unlikely that AMD will wrest the performance crown from Intel with Shanghai.

August 20th, 2008

The news on Intel's Nehalem; chips with integrated GPUs up next

Posted by John Morris @ 7:49 am

Categories: AMD, Desktops, Intel, Power conservation, Semiconductor architecture, multicore processors, notebooks, quad-core processors

Tags: Core, Intel Corp., Chip, GPU, Nehalem, Processors, Semiconductors, Hardware, Components, John Morris

Intel has given new details of what it calls the biggest change in its processor platform in a decade.

The new information on Nehalem, discussed in keynotes and presentations at the Intel Developer Forum this week, was expected. Nehalem isn’t a single product, but a family of products all based on a new microarchitecture. The first products, due to ship in the fourth quarter, will be performance and “extreme” desktop chips bearing the name Core i7. Nehalem will also be used in processors with four cores for servers and workstations (Nehalem-EP), followed by mobile processors for laptops. In his keynote, senior vice president Pat Gelsinger first showed a silicon wafer of Nehalem-EX processors each with eight cores scheduled for the second half of 2009.

Intel didn’t provide much in the way of performance comparisons for Nehalem, partly because it is not a single product, but also, I suspect, because it is saving the numbers for the launch of the Core i7 chips. In general terms, the goal of Nehalem was to increase system performance, while using about the same or less power than the current Core 2 and Xeon platforms. “High performance and energy efficiency are not mutually exclusive. They may sound mutually exclusive but if you innovate enough, it is possible,” said Rajesh Kumar, an Intel fellow in a separate Nehalem presentation. “We want to give you a racecar that gives you the miles per gallon of an economy car.”

The changes to the memory architecture in Nehalem are well-known at this point. It has a memory controller integrated on the die and uses a new interface, Quick Path Interconnect or QPI, which links the cores to one another and to the I/O hub, or Southbridge. (The Northbridge, a memory controller that was part of a separate chipset, and the Front Side Bus are headed for the Computer History Museum.) Nehalem also uses DDR3 memory, which operates at higher frequencies (1,066MHz initially) and at lower voltage, which saves power. All of these changes boost system bandwidth (by 3.4 times, according to an Intel presentation) and decrease latency, the time it takes for a processor to retrieve information from memory. AMD is quick to point out that it has had many of these features in its processors for years.

The cache also has a big impact on system latency, and this is becoming a bigger problem in systems with four or eight cores, each of which in the case of Nehalem can process two instructions simultaneously (multi-threading). To address this, Nehalem adds a third level of cache. Intel also made some lower level changes to the cache–new error correction algorithms, independent power control and the use of low-voltage 8-T SRAM in place of the usual 6-T SRAM–so that the entire system can operate at lower voltages without running into memory errors.

The power management features of Nehalem were not as well known until now. Nehalem’s turbo mode can automatically turn cores on and off depending on the workload. This happens at a low level so it is invisible to the operating system and user. Intel says this will provide optimal performance with both single-threaded applications–by shifting all the power to a single core–and on highly multi-threaded applications which can take advantage of four or even eight cores with two threads each.

To make turbo mode work, Intel said it designed “new transistors and silicon technology” so that a power gate at each core can shut down power completely, and added a Power Control Unit–a separate microcontroller with more than 1 million transistors of its own–to control the gates. In a not-so-subtle knock at competitor AMD and its “asset-smart” plans, Kumar said the new power management features showed why close cooperation between process technology engineers and chip designers was so important in advanced microprocessors.

Intel also dropped some hints about how the technology in Nehalem will be used in other products, most notably processors that have both general-purpose x86 cores and GPUs on the same silicon die. For example, the QPI can be used to connect the CPUs to the GPUs and turbo mode can be extended to control the GPUs as well, so that you can have any combination of x86 cores and GPUs running depending on the applications you are using. There will be both desktop (Havendale) and mobile (Auburndale) processors with GPUs onboard; the desktop and laptop versions without integrated graphics are code-named Lynnfield and Clarksfield, respectively. These are all due in the second half of 2009.

AMD has its own version of this CPU-GPU tandem, which it refers to as Fusion, though initial versions will put the CPU and GPU in the same overall package, but not on the same physical piece of silicon.

August 18th, 2008

Before Intel's big show, AMD launches an attack

Posted by John Morris @ 7:54 am

Categories: AMD, Data centers, Desktops, Intel, Nvidia, PC gaming, PC graphics, Semiconductor architecture, multicore processors

Tags: Advanced Micro Devices Inc., Graphics, Intel Corp., Attack, Imitation, Processors, Semiconductors, Hardware, Components, John Morris

With Intel’s annual conference set to start this week, AMD launched a pre-emptive strike in a press conference on Friday.

AMD executives said the processor innovations you’ll hear about next week are imitations of technology they introduced as much as five years ago, and Intel’s Larrabee graphics architecture remains little more than a PowerPoint slide. For its part, AMD did not announce any new products or changes to its roadmap, but they said the company had gotten its “swagger” back, releasing a string of competitive PC platforms and graphics products this year.

This week Intel will release more details on its Nehalem architecture, the first iteration of which is now known as Core i7. Randy Allen, the senior vice president of AMD’s computing division, said many innovations in Core i7 are really imitations of features such as the integrated memory controller and HyperTransport already in AMD processors.

“I guess on one level it is sort of gratifying. Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery,” Allen said. “But on another level it is somewhat annoying . . . [Nehalem is] not rewriting the book, but rather imitating or photocopying our innovations.”

Read the rest of this entry »

August 5th, 2008

The lowdown on Intel's Larrabee

Posted by John Morris @ 7:32 am

Categories: AMD, Desktops, Intel, Nvidia, PC gaming, PC graphics, Semiconductor architecture, multicore processors

Tags: NVidia Corp., Intel Corp., GPU, Larrabee, John Morris

With Siggraph 2008 starting next week and IDF (Intel Developer Forum) on its heels, Intel is revealing more details of its mysterious Larrabee project. Intel has finally stated unequivocally that its “many-core” architecture will be used in desktop add-in boards for 3D gaming that compete directly with AMD and Nvidia GPUs–at least initially, though there are other applications as well.

The latest presentation has a lot of technical detail on the architecture–which is very different from the typical massively-parallel GPU–but it raises as many questions as it answers. The exact number of cores (8 to 32?), the size of the chip, how much power it will consume, and of course how it will actually perform on 3D games all remain big question marks. In his Speeds and Feeds blog, Peter N.Glaskowsky notes that a Larrabee chip with 32 1GHz cores could theoretically exceed a teraflop–around the performance of today’s fastest GPUs, Nvidia’s GX280 and AMD’s ATI Radeon HD 4870–but it would probably be commercially impractical even for Intel. Curiously there’s little mention of ray-tracing anymore. Larrabee uses the same DirectX and OpenGL APIs as ordinary GPUs to run games, but it goes about it in a very different way; Ars Technica has a nice analysis of how Larrabee renders 3D frames in software, rather than in hardware as in a GPU.

Since Larrabee-based add-in boards won’t be available until early 2010, it is little surprise that product details are still sketchy, and it is too early to tell how it will really stack up to true discrete GPUs , a market completely dominated by AMD and Nvidia. Intel has failed here before, but given its vast resources, you can’t count it out. In a research note, industry analyst Jon Peddie predicted that Intel will ship 46 million Larrabee “GPUs” in 2010. The total market for discrete GPUs was 350 million units last year.

More coverage of Larrabee:

• Larrabee: Intel’s biggest leap since the Pentium Pro [Ars Technica]
• Intel’s Larrabee–more and less than meets the eye [Speeds and Feeds]
• Intel details future ‘Larrabee’ graphics chip [Nanotech: The circuits blog]
• Intel’s Larrabee Graphics To Take On Nvidia, ATI … In 2010 [ChannelWeb]

July 24th, 2008

Intel launches new chip for consumer electronics

Posted by John Morris @ 9:37 am

Categories: AMD, IBM, Intel, Semiconductor architecture, cellular phones, consumer electronics, multicore processors, semiconductors

Tags: Consumer Electronics, Electronics, Intel Corp., Chip, Atom, SoCs, Semiconductors, Network Technology, Processors, Hardware

In its latest bid to expand beyond PCs and servers into industrial and consumer electronics applications, Intel has announced a new family of embedded processors.

These chips are not based on the Atom processor already used in netbooks and Mobile Internet Devices (MIDs)–those versions won’t arrive until sometime next year. Rather the EP80579 family consists of eight chips all based on the Pentium M core, running at speeds from 600MHz to 1.2GHz. These are System-On-Chip designs (SoCs), meaning that in addition to the core processor a single chip also integrates system-level functions. In this case, that includes the memory controller, I/O controller hub and, on some chips, RISC-based accelerators for specialized tasks such as data encryption.

Initially these SoCs will be used primarily as microcontrollers for industrial applications. Intel is seeking to capitalize on what it sees as a trend toward making everything from ATM machines to VoIP controllers more like PCs with higher performance and more powerful networking capabilities. Though it gave few details, Intel said it has more than 50 customers working on 15 different designs based on its “Smart SoCs.” Eventually Intel hopes to push its SoCs into a wide range of consumer electronics including set-top boxes, TVs and in-car entertainment systems.

By integrating the functions of up to four different chips on a single piece of silicon, Intel said its SoCs are 45 percent smaller and use 34 percent less power. They are still, however, too power hungry at 11 watts to 21 watts to be used in many portable devices. By comparison, the ARM-based chips found in many smartphones typically require less than 2 watts.

That is why future SoCs will be based on the 45nm Atom chip, which will not only use less power but should also cost less. The EP80579 SoCs range from $40 to $95, while the simplest Atom-based SoCs could start around $3. Atom-based SoCs will reportedly include Canmore (later this year) and Sodaville (2009) SoCs for consumer electronics, new embedded processors (2009), and Moorestown for MIDs (2009-2010). Eventually these SoCs will have multi-core processors and contain hundreds of millions of transistors. All told, the versatile Atom will cover three markets: MIDs, netbooks and embedded processing.

Intel is renewing its effort as its main competitor is moving away from consumer electronics. Last week AMD took an $876 million charge to exit the handheld and digital TV businesses, which were part of the company’s $5.4 billion acquisition of ATI in 2006. AMD will release a new processor, code-named Bulldozer, for low-cost PCs, an area where higher-end, Atom-based netbooks and low-end, Celeron M-based laptops are beginning to overlap, but this is a different market.

That’s not to say there aren’t direct competitors in this space; there are plenty of them cranking out ARM-, MIPs- and PowerPC-based embedded processors including Broadcom, Freescale, Samsung, STMicro and Texas Instruments. And Marvell designs and sells processors for storage and networking products using the same ARM-based XScale technology from Intel’s last foray in this area. But Intel believes the time is right, and that an x86-based design that is compatible with existing software and relatively easy to program will finally crack these markets.

More coverage of the EP80579 SoC family announcement:

• Intel marches once again into microcontroller market [EDN]
• Intel starts foray into SoC market [EE Times]
• Intel’s Embedded Processors Destined for New Gadgets [eWeek]
• Intel Revamps Its System-on-Chip Designs [Information Week]
• Intel Welcomes Home Integrated Chips [PC Magazine]
• Intel Takes on Embedded Market With Atom Chip [PC World]
• Intel Smart SoC — The Move to Purpose-Built Chips [Technology@Intel]
• Intel launches chips that will bring Internet to everyday devices [Venture Beat]
• Intel Brings Out Multifunction Chips In Bid to Diversify [WSJ]
• Intel chip launch targets robots, cars and TV [ZDNet UK]