Multiple Front Side Buses; Coming to an Intel Server Near You
 

Dissecting code names seems like a full time job for some of us lately. Fortunately, a full time job pays for my schooling so here are the breakdown of Intel's newest code names, and what they mean to us.

Hopefully you have kept up with the last few articles from Anand and Jarred concerning dual core product SKUs and general Intel roadmaps. Of course, processors are only half of Intel's business - core logic composes the less glamorous side of Intel. Although we have been talking about Glenwood and Lakeport for several months now, today we are going to look at Intel's new server chipsets, Blackford and Greencreek.

Greencreek (also known as Greencreek 2S - 2Socket) is slated as the Tumwater (E7525) replacement, while Blackford is the Lindenhurst (E7520) replacement. In short, the two chipsets are nearly identical with Blackford serving as the high end version of the platform. The large news here is Intel's push for dual front side buses. The latest Intel roadmaps thoroughly describe dual independent buses as:

"New 2S platform architecture for improved performance"


2S, of course, denotes 2 Sockets. With advances towards dual core processing, the idea of independent buses per socket probably indicates the best approach possible for Intel to de-saturate the front side bus. We already know that Twin Castle will utilize independent memory controllers, and with Greencreek/Blackford showing up soon after with dedicated paths to their memory controllers, we could see large boosts in memory IO. The roadmap indicates Twin Castle will utilize multiple buses in later revisions as well.

http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets...oc.aspx?i=2265