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Intel Unveils 6-Core Xeon 7400
Posted by
kdawson
on Tue Sep 16, 2008 07:06 AM
from the not-cheaper-by-the-half-dozen dept.
from the not-cheaper-by-the-half-dozen dept.
JagsLive recommends CNet coverage that begins "Intel officially unveiled its six-core 'Dunnington' Xeon 7400 processor Monday ... As expected, Intel launched the Dunnington chip for high-end servers ... The Xeon 7400 is also one of the first Intel chips to have a monolithic design. In other words, all six cores will be on one piece of silicon. To date, for any processor having more than two cores, Intel has put two separate pieces of silicon ... inside one chip package."
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And we're now tuesday (Score:5, Informative)
I'm betting new Mac Pros will be launched today.
Re:And we're now tuesday (Score:5, Interesting)
http://www.apple.com/uk/imac/ [apple.com]
Hmm, the page you're looking for can't be found.
interesting.
Parent
Re:And we're now tuesday (Score:5, Informative)
The article from Ars technica says:
"Unlike the 65nm, quad-core Tukwila, Dunnington is produced on Intel's 45nm process. This means that Dunnington uses less power, and indeed, the top-end, 2.66GHz SKU has a 130W TDP (compare Tukwila's 170W TDP). The 2.4GHz part boasts a 90W TDP, and there's a 2.13GHz part that runs at a relatively cool 65W."
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Base 2 (Score:4, Interesting)
Is it just me, or does 6 seem like a counter intuitive number of cores ?
2,4,8,16 ... we've been using binary since the start, now we have to start in trinary ?
Re:Base 2 (Score:5, Funny)
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That's already the case. (Score:5, Informative)
6 = 8 - 2 broken cores ?
You joke but that's already the case with PS3's Cell (7 SPU = 8 - 1 broken), with tripple core Phenom (3 = 4 - 1 broken), and with a very high number of graphic cards (The range segment {pro/mid/low-cost} on which a GPU is used = the number of functional cores they managed to salvage)
A separate reason may be the number of {quickpath/hypertransport/etc.} interconnects (6 cores require 15 interconnect to communicate, 8 cores require 28 interconnects). 6 to 8 cores isn't such a big increase but keeps the number of inter connect reasonnable.
(Other processors types like Tilera end up only interconnecting adjacing cores on their 64x chips and you have a strongly *Non*-Uniform Architecture, with not all core able to reach and talk to others at the same speed)
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Re:That's already the case. (Score:4, Informative)
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Re: (Score:3, Informative)
There is no need for a base two if you are adding. You add cores, you do not multiply them.
2, 3 (yes, triple code do exist), 4, 6. I guess the next step will be 8 and perhaps even skip that and make it 9 (3x3).
Re:Base 2 (Score:4, Informative)
That has nothing to do with symmetric multiprocessing. SMP means that all the chips can make memory accesses to all the memory at the same speed. It is the opposite of Non-Uniform Memory Access, or NUMA, in which certain processors (some or all of them) take longer to talk to certain parts of main memory than others or systems in which processors have a faster path to some private off-chip memory in addition to the main shared memory.
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Re: "yes, triple core do exist" (Score:4, Informative)
That's no different from the 486SXes, many of which were 486DX parts with the defective math coprocessor diked out. It's not very different from how the clock rate on every mainstream chip is determined by how many chips turn out to be stable at which speeds.
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Re: "yes, triple core do exist" (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re: (Score:2, Informative)
see amd ... they have 3 cores in one chip and the shit fares prety well
Re:Base 2 (Score:4, Interesting)
AMD once said there was a greater efficiency in interconnecting 3 cores, compared to 4.
Anyone with simple graph theory can see that. 3 nodes only need 3 edges(or interconnects in this case) so that they are only one hop away from each other. With 4 nodes you need 6 edges for a complete graph / clique (each node is adjacent). Now whether that is applicable to the amd chip is a whole other question. I don't have the time (nor do I care to) look up the implementation of the chips.
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Re:Base 2 (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Base 2 (Score:5, Funny)
2^(log2(6)) to be exact.
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Re:Base 2 (Score:5, Funny)
Pentium 1 user, aren't you?
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Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Is it just me, or does 6 seem like a counter intuitive number of cores ?
Remember they need to put other stuff on the silicon too. The XBox 360's CPU uses three quarters of the die for three processors and puts the shared cache etc. in the fourth quarter. Six + support circuitry probably fits a square die better than eight + support.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Sun had 8-core server CPUs since several years now. They didn't have any problems allocating the die's surface.
Re:Base 2 (Score:4, Informative)
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Re: (Score:2)
Yeah, especially with the new motherboard that fits three of these together...
Re:Base 2 (Score:5, Informative)
No, it just matters that you have more than one.
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Specs? (Score:4, Insightful)
I would like to see them pushing consumer multi-core computing more personally. Get MS and other application manufacturers to support more cores. Servers have been doing it for ages and with pretty much all consumer level chips being dual core they should be pushing this angle more.
Though, them incorporating all of the cores on a single piece of silicon is definitely a step forward; the lack of additional specs and the notion of moving the memory controller make this seem like not as big of an announcement...
Re:Specs? (Score:5, Insightful)
I would like to see them pushing consumer multi-core computing more personally. Get MS and other application manufacturers to support more cores. Servers have been doing it for ages and with pretty much all consumer level chips being dual core they should be pushing this angle more.
And before anyone says...."yeah, but Linux/Mac OS X supports multi-cores out of the box".... Yes, yes it does. However, most of the applications don't actually benefit much from SMP by themselves. A few things like video conversion, but, for the most part, office suites, e-mail user agents, etc., do not actually benefit directly from SMP.
OTOH, why should they? Any processor made within the last five years is good enough for that stuff.
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Re: (Score:3, Funny)
OFC if your dealing with server, then it does make a difference for example Unisys 96 core offering (*nix & possible mac only) would be able to hold 256 SQL server databases ... or vista pro
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
There wasn't much in terms of technical specs in TFA. 6 cores, 16MB cache, anything else? Clock speed? 16MB of L2? L3? FSB? DDR(n)? (Though this is probably more up to the MB manufacturer) Why are they moving the memory controller off silicon? That in itself seems like a step backwards.
Pentiums have never had an on-die MMU in the first place, they're actually doing that for the upcoming Nehalem. AMD has used an on-die MMU since the Athlon 64, and while it certainly helps squeeze more efficiency out of the system, the faster clocked bus on Intel rigs often made up for the theoretical performance gap.
The Clock speed was omitted from the article, but the Xeon 7400 is clocked at 2.6ghz. That's actually pretty decent for a Xeon, they don't go as high as the mainstream processors because they
It has six cores... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:It has six cores... (Score:4, Funny)
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Wattage (Score:5, Interesting)
I think server builders these days are less interested in the number of cores per CPU and more interested in improvements in the performance/wattage ratio.
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Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Watt you say?
You have no chance to survive make your time.
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so this means (Score:5, Funny)
And how will you power it build your own nuclear p (Score:4, Funny)
And how will you power it build your own nuclear power plant?
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With a catch.... (Score:4, Informative)
"There's an odd catch, however, that will affect the highest of high-end configurations. "Because Microsoft Windows operating system support is limited to a 64-core environment, within a single OS instance, we'll support up to 64 cores," said Colin Lacey, a Unisys marketing vice president."
Gads, who on earth would run a 64-core Windows box? Unless they want to virtualize out multiple servers on one bit of hardware. Most of the "heavy lifting" I've seen on servers with mucho processor cores are running some flavor of Unix. I'm kinda surprised this hasn't been fixed already given the momentum of multi-core processors.
Cheers,
Re:With a catch.... (Score:5, Interesting)
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Re:With a catch.... (Score:5, Funny)
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Anyone doing heavy-duty OCR would (Score:5, Interesting)
Gads, who on earth would run a 64-core Windows box?
The ABBYY OCR engine (Windows only) in any of its latest versions (either direct from ABBYY or OEM'd into someone else's product) will multithread during recognition -- one thread for each core. We currently use a dual quad-core Xeon Windows Server box and I wish I had more cores -- when you get a project to OCR 2.1 million docs in a timeframe of less than a few years, you will too. ;-)
ABBYY's own server-level product (Recognition Server) will span multiple boxes and use any designated cores available on those boxes -- and it scales linerally with the number of cores available (distributed or local). So yeah, there are still some Windows-only applications where a truly monster box would be great.
OCR is one of those apps where you can absolutely NEVER have enough resources for big jobs.
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Now you can open six tabs in Chrome... (Score:5, Funny)
... and each one will have it's own processor core.
Yay, more cycles we can't utilize (Score:5, Interesting)
Until Intel unveils their version of HyperTransport, this will be more of the same.
You put a quad-core Xeon against a quad-core Opteron and under most conditions (besides CPU-only work) the Opteron will kill the Xeon.
Now, we'll have even more cycles we can't utilize, because of the old design of the system.
If you're going to do anything that uses both RAM and CPU (aka VMware hosts, which is what most big servers are used for these days) you'd better off with an Opteron.
I'd rather use a dual or quad socket Dual-Core Opteron than a dual or quad socket Quad-core Xeon.
Re:Yay, more cycles we can't utilize (Score:4, Informative)
In the article it's pretty clear this is a legacy-at-launch part to be a last upgrade for people using the current FSB technology. Other products will use QuickPath, but this is for those who want to keep their current motherboards for one more generation of processors.
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Yes! It should totally be a power of two. (Score:5, Funny)
I think they're really making 8-core chips but their factories are primitive so normally only about six of them work.
These chips are all defective. I wouldn't buy one and neither should you.
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Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Yes! It should totally be a power of two. (Score:5, Funny)
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Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Yes! It should totally be a power of two. (Score:5, Funny)
I steal my computers from really rich orphans. 'Course, if they have parents, it takes just a little work and they're soon orphans.
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I Want (Score:5, Funny)
I'm holding out for a 12 core processor.
I'm also holding out for a razor blade with 6 blades, screw those wimpy 5 blade razors that Tiger is pitching right now. (F*ck, I have a beard, why do I want a razor blade? Screw it, I'm still waiting for 6 blades.)
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Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
In this case, much as it pains me, it has nothing to do with windows, and everything to do with you getting the wrong tool for the job. You have a double garage and two cars, but you can't drive them both.
I on the other hand have friends I like to let use my spare car: Things like VHDL Simulators and FPGA synthesis tools, that will gladly consume a core and several gigs of memory for a few hours. On a single core machine you might as well go to sleep because the system will be next to unresponsive while
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
This is a server CPU. Not sure what XP has to do with it, really? People who run servers definitely use multiple cores.