Intel Bloomfield: The Luxury CPU Line
@ 2008/08/07The more I think about Bloomfield, the more it looks like a radical break for Intel, and I'm not talking about performance.
What Intel is doing with Bloomfield is essentially expanding its Extreme processors into an Extreme processor line. Bloomfields will have their own socket, incompatible with any eventual lower-end Nehalem. It will initially need an X58 motherboard, and don't hold your breath expecting more reasonably priced Nehalem chipsets, needing three channels of DDR3 RAM.
This is going to be wonderful for those premium and luxury PC lines. Configure systems using the mainstream and premium lines, and you'll find yourself saying, "Why should I pay a good deal more for the same components in the premium line?" Bloomfields will allow the upper-end lines to distinguish themselves, indeed, this is probably the main reason why they exist.
This is what Intel does when AMD isn't around to constrain it, slow the pace, maximize the profits (and AMD would do exactly the same thing if the shoe were on the other foot). This is the world without AMD, and so long as AMD doesn't have CPU that can compete on the higher-end, that's the way it's going to be.
What Intel is doing with Bloomfield is essentially expanding its Extreme processors into an Extreme processor line. Bloomfields will have their own socket, incompatible with any eventual lower-end Nehalem. It will initially need an X58 motherboard, and don't hold your breath expecting more reasonably priced Nehalem chipsets, needing three channels of DDR3 RAM.
This is going to be wonderful for those premium and luxury PC lines. Configure systems using the mainstream and premium lines, and you'll find yourself saying, "Why should I pay a good deal more for the same components in the premium line?" Bloomfields will allow the upper-end lines to distinguish themselves, indeed, this is probably the main reason why they exist.
This is what Intel does when AMD isn't around to constrain it, slow the pace, maximize the profits (and AMD would do exactly the same thing if the shoe were on the other foot). This is the world without AMD, and so long as AMD doesn't have CPU that can compete on the higher-end, that's the way it's going to be.