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Intel demos Nehalem-EX octal-core CPU

Published on 27th May 2009 by Tim Smalley

Intel yesterday demonstrated the next step forwards its Xeon CPU line will take with its eight-core, 16 thread Nehalem-EX processor.

Intel yesterday demonstrated the next step forwards its Xeon CPU line will take with its eight-core, 16 thread Nehalem-EX processor.

The chip giant said that Nehalem-EX will enter production later this year and will feature eight cores, 16 threads and a whopping 24MB of cache packed into a mere 2.3 billion transistors manufactured using Intel’s 45nm high-k metal gate process technology.

In addition, Nehalem-EX will add new reliability, availability and serviceability (RAS) features, such as Machine Check Architecture (MCA) Recovery, which is traditionally only found in Intel’s Itanium family of CPUs.

There are also four high-bandwidth QPI links, enabling up to eight processors to work together in one system for a total of 128 threads.

Intel set up a demo with IBM to show 128 processing threads working in one system – you can watch that demo below, where all 128 threads are pegged at 100 per cent utilisation. The company also said that scalability to 32 sockets was also possible, but this hasn’t been demonstrated yet.

Discuss in the forums.

16 Comments

Discuss in the forums Reply

Omnituens 27th May 2009, 14:51

Mmmmm... threads.

Turbotab 27th May 2009, 15:15

Coming to a Pixar studio near you soon. Don't need it, but want it:)

Jozo 27th May 2009, 15:24

Will they ever stop putting more and more cores in CPUs??

It may be needed for high performance computing and such "pro" stuff. But I hope it never comes in our everyday desktops cause I'm gona go nuts.

BTW I think the link to the thread in the forums doesn't work.

l3v1ck 27th May 2009, 15:29

How fast will the be able to go with stock cooling? People may be better off if they can overclock a quad core further, after all, not much uses eight cores.

MrGumby 27th May 2009, 15:40

Better write that letter to Santa James. This would be a folders wet dream!

tank_rider 27th May 2009, 17:09

Good to see the march of technology continuing. People saying they have no need for anything more that quad core at the moment are probably the same people who said dual cores are plenty when quads were demo'd. We won't be getting to the too many cores sector until every thread has it's own core and as multi core is the way things are going software will very quickly take advantage of this. Takes me back to the days of upgrading to a dual core cpu and seeing my cfd computations take half the time, that was a very good day! I'm sure the F1 teams will be knocking at the door to get their simulation servers upgraded so they can simulate even more with the lack of in season testing now allowed!

Turbotab 27th May 2009, 17:13

Quote:

Originally Posted by tank_rider
Good to see the march of technology continuing. People saying they have no need for anything more that quad core at the moment are probably the same people who said dual cores are plenty when quads were demo'd. We won't be getting to the too many cores sector until every thread has it's own core and as multi core is the way things are going software will very quickly take advantage of this. Takes me back to the days of upgrading to a dual core cpu and seeing my cfd computations take half the time, that was a very good day! I'm sure the F1 teams will be knocking at the door to get their simulation servers upgraded so they can simulate even more with the lack of in season testing now allowed!

Except for McLaren, who seem to be running their simulations on Wiis, given their performance this season.

Von Lazuli 27th May 2009, 17:14

Oh! I want soo much...

As I sit here waiting 20minutes for a single frame render, I am desperately crying out for more threads...

Gimme Intel?

mrb_no1 27th May 2009, 17:21

Quote:

Originally Posted by Turbotab
Except for McLaren, who seem to be running their simulations on Wiis, given their performance this season.

lolololol, awesome!

it may have limited applications for desktop users bit where cgi, simulations and any heavy calculations are required in supercomps, this kind of technology will always help things along.

peace

fatman

Goty 27th May 2009, 17:46

Who wants to bet that it would be more cost effective to go with twice as many quad core CPUs than to shell out for this thing?

Cupboard 27th May 2009, 18:56

^well, you would need twice as many motherboards, twice as many coolers and likely twice as much space. It might be cheaper with quad cores but I think it unlikely.

Dreaming 27th May 2009, 19:42

Quote:

Originally Posted by tank_rider
Good to see the march of technology continuing. People saying they have no need for anything more that quad core at the moment are probably the same people who said dual cores are plenty when quads were demo'd. We won't be getting to the too many cores sector until every thread has it's own core and as multi core is the way things are going software will very quickly take advantage of this. Takes me back to the days of upgrading to a dual core cpu and seeing my cfd computations take half the time, that was a very good day! I'm sure the F1 teams will be knocking at the door to get their simulation servers upgraded so they can simulate even more with the lack of in season testing now allowed!

Have to say I had said to plenty of people that for the average person quad cores are more than they need and I stand by that.

dec 28th May 2009, 00:35

i wonder how much intel is going to have to pay the EU when it tries to sell these for $10000000 =D. anyways 16 threads.....goodness any guesses on how many seconds it takes this thing to benchmark on paint.NET? my bet is somewhere between 1 and 20.

V3ctor 28th May 2009, 08:26

This weekend at Monaco I saw a McLaren's notebook with a Core i7 simbol... so... I just think it's a problem of aeroynamics with a bad chassis. Next year, maybe...

perplekks45 28th May 2009, 14:02

Impressive stuff but as long as applications/games won't use more than 4 cores this is only interesting for render farms or number crunchers.

Still, me want. ;)

Anakha 28th May 2009, 21:57

Quote:

Originally Posted by Jozo
Will they ever stop putting more and more cores in CPUs??

It may be needed for high performance computing and such "pro" stuff. But I hope it never comes in our everyday desktops cause I'm gona go nuts.

Simple answer: No. They're getting very close to the wall on how high they can make a single core run. But with die-shrinking going on all the time, they can still satisfy Moore's law by doubling the cores on a processor instead.

And that's why multithreaded development is the next big thing in computer programming these days.