Intel Nehalem, Bloomfield has 8MB of cache
 

To all of our surprise the future Nehalem processors with four cores and eight threads will have 8MB of cache memory. Yorkfield has 12MB, or should we say two times 6MB as this is still dual chip stitched together chip. Each core in Yorkfield has 3MB cache and it looks that Nehalem will have 8MB.

http://www.fudzilla.com/index.php?op...11&Ite mid=35

Sounds about right. Shouldn't be a need for a huge cache with an IMC, but looks like they kept some of the cache for HT use. I'm very curious how big the die is compared to a 45nm Yorkfield... :)

so exactly how will an integrated memory controller help speed.... i imagine it will be easier for the cpu to communicate with the ram.... but how much faster will this make it... i know amd has been doing it but don't know that much about it. if you guys could explain or point me in the right direction of an explanation it would be greatly appreciated. thanks.

reduce latency, faster data exchange = speedier CPU

The entire point of thise insanely large 12mb L2 caches, even 16MB caches is to keep the CPU fed with data to crunch.

If you look at AMD K7 processor verses AMD K8 processor benchmarks you will see the improvement integrating the memory controller will bring... it is the biggest reason for why AMD's K8 easily defeated the Pentium.

For example... Imagine you and two other people in a building... You need to complete a project but lack the information. To get the info you must ask the 2nd person to go talk to the 3rd person to get your info and bring it back to you. If you keep havingto ask questions or you find you don't have all the info you can see how slow this would make completing your project...

The middle guy has to act as the go between for you to get the information you need... Until now the middle guy has always been the chipset, the CPU could never directly talk to or update the memory.

I don't suspect so see performance boost like with K7->K8, with C2D reducing memory latency's at FSB400 doesn't help that much.

It was my understanding that the FSB has an inherent latency penalty already, and that aggressive memory prefetchers only hid the latency issue. ;) So increasing the FSB would not compensate any for the inherent latency penalty. FSB is just a general bus where everything in the system including other processors use it together, they all share the same FSB. Just like with PCI bus, all the cards used the same PCI bus and would hinder each other's performance.

With QPI not only will there be a dedicated point-to-point interconnect between the CPU and chipset, there will bea dedicated connection directly to the main memory. No waiting on other cores and other processors to be done with the FSB anymore. Since Nehalem will also be a native quad design there won't be any added penalty for having cores mesh coherency traffic over the FSB either.

Intel chips still scale amazingly worse compared to AMD Opterons in dual/quad socket servers, even if they still overall perform better against AMD chips... this could only be from the FSB/lack of IMC. ;)

C2D is far more data hungry than K8 ever could hope to be. Nehalem will be even more so, Intel widened the instruction pipe even further to accomodate 4 cores executing 8 threads... I suspect this may contribute to the gains seen

For server/workstation, the bandwidth of the CSI bus is just huge, combined with the on-die memory controller Nehalem will certainly offer a nice gain compared to C2D. On the tech side of things, Nehalem is spectacular, but not for home users... probable not enough data to feed.

We haven't run out of data yet... :) Even single-threaded applications are going to see a performance improvement.

Thought this was interesting: http://blogs.zdnet.com/Ou/?p=1025 Especially for Shanghai's results.

To bad they forgot to mention clock rates :D

Still, at this moment dual core is still favorable over Quads, unless software dramatically changes over the following half year I don't think many home users will need it, maybe in 2 years or so... Theoretically, single core apps may be faster, but will you notice the difference compared with the E8x00 which is doing all ready very good? If so, where?

I don't care, I need the fastest, the most of everything in my processor. This is the only way I could beat Jimmy, my next door neighbor. He isn't a smart guy but he did better in school than I; he got a better job and constantly get promoted. He even has more than one girl friend.

I need the best CPU so I could get ahead of him this time. By the way, would this CPU get me doing my Excel chart better? it is harder to learn from my Q6700 because of the slow speed, insufficient cache and high latency. :D

Yeah, doesn't really mean anything as it is presented, but still was interesting to read.

Be more specific with your question... I think almost no users would feel a difference in system responsiveness between a dual and a quad. But I certainly as heck would notice the performance increase because I use all four cores.

Frankly, your mocking post is simply insulting. I'd expect more from a reviewer. :)

You also make the mistake of assuming I am interested in Nehalem because I want the best of the best or want bragging rights. Perhaps next time you should consider that some people are interested in the progress of technology just for fun, and find it interesting to speculate on. Nothing so petty as oneupmanship or "my computer is better than yours".

I don't think that was the exact meaning of his post Kougar ;)
more towards AMD/Intel pushing things towards multithreads which doesn't serve 99% of apps used by most people... at all.

The technology upgrade is indeed very interesting, brings the home users closer to ray tracing rendering machines ;)

until you read the thoughts of those people in the 3D industry... John Carmack doesn't see raytracing to become "the" way to do things... not now, not in the future. It's not just GPU/CPU limitation, but limitations of Raytracing itself.. anyway search for his latest interview;)
http://www.madshrimps.be/vbulletin/f...engines-42691/

I'm quite sure that Sidney wasn't personal Kougar, just speaking "in general". I for one am a bit like you : interested in progress because I like it, and to have some fun benchmarking and competing against others... the amount of money I spend having this fun however... :redface:

I have a neigbor named Jimmy. :)

Jimmy is 72 years old. We still have to talk about how to use the CPU in a practical sense for everyday regular Joe = sidney. :D

I like to know what it can benefit me using Excel, Words .... etc. Okay, I used to run MRP with mover 20,000 SKUs in PC environment with a server running merely 1Gz as late as 2001; run time = 32 minutes. I love to hear from IT point of view the benefit more so than regular users.

Give me something to justfy the purchase and be able to convince my boss to spend the money.;) That, my friend is how I would write the review.

oh for business these CPUs are golden, stick a pair of those 6 cores in a 1/2U server, install VMWare ESX and you got yourself a dedicated Domain controller, or two, file servers, application servers, exchange server. And this all with one physical machine!

Yeah, the future is indeed still too unclear to say that Ray Tracing is the future of 3D gaming.

Everybody has different idea's, the console industry may have a large influence on the future of pc gaming, most money is gained there (+10M PS3 sold since recently, even more XBOX 360 units). That are lots of AMD/NVIDIA GPU's. If Intel could demonstrate a good working console GPU, things might get problematic for NVIDIA. MS has XBOX and DirectX API, it will be very interesting to see what road they will follow. :)

Unfortunately in business, the IT guy won't just stick the CPU into the server. He ain't that stupid to begin with. A new package server from Sun or Oracle will run into the thousands. Bottom line still is "what do I gain from productivity point of view?".

I could see in a smaller scale particularly in the US where distribution of products become more than manufacturing; EDI transaction in the Mass Market using smaller servers for EDI functionality covering ASN, B/L, etc with WalMart, BestBuy, Target ...... might benefit. However, most these transactions are done at the same time of the day limited to 2-3 hours period which is limited by the transmission speed more so than CPU.

I just told you; one physical server, multiple virtual servers, easy to configure, easy to backup, easy to restore, easy to upgrade.

easy to store, easy to cool too

the actual DATA storage is separate if you want to have speedier, fail-prove, multiserver support:)

Well, to be frank there was nothing in his post to indicate if it was a overly broad, general statement, or if it was directed at my past comments. Given the highly facetious/mocking tone of his post and that due to my replies up to that point only seemed to indicate the later.

I would agree whether the performance increase is worthwhile enough to justify an upgrade is a important consideration to any review. However I also think being able to get higher performance for the same $1 spent towards a new system or new mainframe is also important.

Sure, it won't affect Excel that much, but with that logic all anyone needs is a Pentium 4, which is true. However not all consumers cannot make use of all four cores, and not all businesses cannot make use of the extra CPU power. Solely focusing on business computers that run Office products all day is just another small portion of the market.

got to be kidding right? most companies I know use almost solely office and little else, maybe a custom program here and there, but nothing that ever requires quad cores or even dual cores. we're talking about hundreds of thousands machines here, vs a few special cases which need more power.

(coca cola, mobistar, european union, atlas copco, toyota, monroe, banks, etc etc, large companies:))

It would indeed be more effective to give everyone a 24" VA LCD for boosting productivity and/or a MTRON SSD and 4 GB RAM.

exactly, 22" is ~$200, that's peanuts. 2gb minimum for Office. SSD drive with write speeds at 100Mb/s+ will be interesting

kougar... that was the perfect explination. thanks

i get people hatin on my p4 but hey... it honestly still gets the job done. sure i can't unzip files as fast. but that's ok. regardless it's still time for that upgrade