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Intel Core i7: Core Overhaul
November 8, 2008 by Lawrence Lee with Mike
Chin
The release of the Core line of desktop processors was
Intel's great redemption. After struggling for some years to
compete with AMD's Athlon 64 line, Intel abandoned the
NetBurst architechture of their Pentium 4 and Pentium D chips in
favor of Core and Core 2. The Core 2 took back the performance
crown and Intel regained much of the market share it had lost,
forcing AMD to drop prices in order to compete at least in the
middle and low end of the processor market, at great financial
cost. To this day, no AMD dual core processor can outperform the
fastest of the initially released Core 2's, the 2.93Ghz Core
2 Extreme X6800, released all the way back in July of 2006, an
eternity in the life cycle of processors; AMD still has a lot of
catching up to do. While it has been a great run for Core 2,
Intel is not resting on its laurels now. The next generation Core
i7 is here, and with it, Intel is pushing to keep its lead into
the future.
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A Core i7 processor. Bare on the left, with heatspreader in the
center, and the back side on the right. No, it's not quite
square.
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The Core i7 line is the first release of Intel's new
Nehalem architechture. Though it is built on the same 45nm
process as current Core 2 processors, Nehalem is not simply the
next generation of Core — it is a drastic re-design in many
respects. First and foremost, the processors feature an
integrated memory controller — a move that proved very
advantageous for AMD's Opteron and Athlon 64. Having a memory
controller built directly on the CPU die allows CPU/memory
operations to bypass routing via the northbridge chip. This
increases overall memory performance and frees up bandwidth for
other interfaces; multiple cores benefit greatly. The controller
also supports triple channel memory, presumably a step above dual
channel.
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A Nehalem die.
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Following in the footsteps of AMD once again, Intel has
developed their own version of HyperTransport called QuickPath Interconnect. QPI allows for a 20-bit wide
25.6 GB/s link between the CPU and northbridge — doubling
performance compared to the maximum 1600Mhz Front Side Bus
available currently on Intel platforms. Nehalem also sees
Intel's return to Hyper-Threading, a feature from the Pentium 4
era not present in the Core 2 line. There are plans for 8 core
Nehalem processors capable of dealing with 16 threads
simultaneously.
Power management is handled differently as well. Each Core i7
chip has a PCU (Power Control Unit) which can alter core
frequencies and voltages dynamically depending on load. When the
cores are idle, PCU can underclock and undervolt them to use less
power or put them in a sort of standby mode where they use almost
no power at all. To complement this, Turbo Boost
Technology will overclock active cores while the idle ones
are asleep — as many programs cannot fully take advantage
of 4 cores, a boost in clock speeds of the ones they can use is
useful. Turbo mode will also overclock all cores if it deems that
the processor is receiving sufficient cooling.
With all these changes comes a new socket, LGA 1366.
Enthusiasts often cry in outrage when a socket change occurs,
usually because it's seen as unwarranted money-grab that
requires not only a new CPU for an upgrade but new motherboard
and heatsink as well. This time around, with all the changes to
the architecture, the die size is much larger so a new socket
appears to have been unavoidable. The thing does have 1366
contact points!
The Core i7 line, code-named Bloomfield, is currently
comprised of three quad-core chips. They each have 256KB of L2
cache per core, 8MB of L3 cache and TDPs of 130W. The 920 runs at
2.66Ghz, the 940 at 2.93Ghz, and finally the 965 Extreme which
runs at 3.2Ghz. Pricing is set to be $284, $562, and $999 USD
respectively in large qualtities for Intel's biggest
buyers.
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