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Hardware "Nehalem" Taped-out and Running Windows
Kristopher Kubicki (Blog) - September 18, 2007 12:04 PM
Print E-mail del.icio.us 148 comment(s) - last by TheGreek.. on Sep 24 at 2:58 PM

Intel announces 45nm "Nehalem" at IDF during Paul Otellini's keynote  (Source: DailyTech, Brandon Hill)

Intel's Paul Otellini holding up a "Nehale" wafer  (Source: DailyTech, Brandon Hill)
Intel's largest architecture overhaul in decades is less than a year away

It wasn't that long ago that predictions of doom and gloom pinned Intel between a rock and a hard place.  The company's NetBurst architecture didn't scale and its Itanium architecture didn't sell; it looked as if for the first time in history, Moore's Law was in serious jeopardy. 

All that changed, to some extent on a whim, with the Israeli-developed mobile processors.  The mobile Core architecture would eventually replace Intel's entire NetBurst family, and the company vowed a new development cycle that would assure the company never pigeonholed itself in the same manner again: Intel's "tick-tock" philosophy.  The company will replace its processor node every two years, followed by a new architecture design every other year on the mature processor node.

Nehalem chief architect, Glen Hinton, tells DailyTech the philosophy behind 731 million transistor, 45nm Nehalem is an extension of the approach to Penryn and 65nm Core 2 Duo processors: a universal, robust core design that will scale from mobile to server applications.

"We wanted to build the highest performance per core that could be used in notebooks all the way to high end servers," stated Hinton.

The Gigahertz War has officially shifted to the Multi-core War.  However, instead of fighting a pitch-battle the company will focus on improvements that allow multi-core systems to scale without forking development trees.  Hinton emphasizes the company spent extensive resources improving single-thread performance, for example. 

An integrated memory controller and new QuickPath interface will probably steal the limelight for these new single-thread improvements, but wait, there's more.

Hyper-Threading will make its long awaited return with Nehalem, yet Hinton claims symmetrical multi-threading is a far cry from the Hyper-Threading found on NetBurst.  Nehalem will allow the operating system to dynamically power down threads -- so while an eight-core Nehalem processor will appear as 16 logical cores to the operating system, these threads can be powered down on-demand. 

Like AMD's Barcelona architecture, Nehalem will allow the operating system to dynamically power and sleep other components of the processor including individual cores and cache components.

Nine months later, it looks like Nehalem is following in the same footsteps at Penryn.  Today Intel CEO Paul Otellini announced the company taped-out the processor three weeks ago.  Otellini demonstrated a Windows XP machine running Nehalem, and claims the processor boots Mac OS X as well.

Neither Otellini nor Hinton would hint when Nehalem will see its first ship date, though Penryn is slated to ship almost exactly 11 months to the date of its tape-out announcement. Nehalem could potentially launch in the late summer of 2008 – 11 months from the initial tape out date.

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Good News
By Master Kenobi (blog) on 9/18/2007 1:03:34 PM , Rating: 2
Good to see Intel is on track to meet their projected launches. There was much skepticism around them sticking to that tick-tock launch pattern, so far so good it seems.




RE: Good News
By Anh Huynh on 9/18/2007 1:19:07 PM , Rating: 3
Intel can stick to tick-tock because it has consecutive design teams working on different projects in different parts of the world, just for processor design.

IIRC AMD only has one design team. Don't quote me on that though.


RE: Good News
By Oregonian2 on 9/18/2007 1:50:40 PM , Rating: 3
Don't know if it's still true, but Intel used to have multiple teams working separately on the SAME project in competition. Whomever was first/best/whatever got produced and released and the other group had their work canceled.


RE: Good News
By imperator3733 on 9/18/2007 2:51:17 PM , Rating: 2
I wouldn't want to be on the team that lost...

Seems like it would be a waste of resources, although the teams might be a bit more motivated.


RE: Good News
By mxzrider2 on 9/22/2007 3:22:15 AM , Rating: 2
this way is the best way to increase productivity and helps create the best possible product


RE: Good News
By Justin Case on 9/18/2007 7:35:20 PM , Rating: 5
Makes you wonder who lost to Netburst...


RE: Good News
By Ringold on 9/18/2007 9:51:52 PM , Rating: 2
Homer Simpson making an attempt at a second job?


RE: Good News
By theapparition on 9/19/2007 12:07:45 PM , Rating: 2
Do you mean who lost to the most successful processor generation in Intel's history?

At the end it was certainly not the best, but it took AMD quite a while to surpass Netburst. All while raking in tons of cash for Intel. Sounds like they did OK to me.


RE: Good News
By Justin Case on 9/19/2007 12:38:31 PM , Rating: 3
Commercial success is hardly proof of inherent quality or technological superiority

In terms of performance it certainly didn't take AMD long to surpass Netburst (Netburst was even slower than the PIII, at first, and the K7 was already faster than the PIII). The only thing that gave Netburst an advantage over the K7 (in a very restricted range of applications) was SSE2.

Intel sold more chips because they have better marketing, established deals with large OEMs and higher production capacity. Oh, and because they blackmailed some companies out of selling chips from the competition, but nevermind that now. Intel is 10 times the size of AMD, of course they're going to sell more. GM also sells more than Lamborghini (they still do, right?).

But the point is that Intel would have sold just as many units (probably more) if they'd gone with an evolutionary, power-efficient design based on the PIII. They could have called it, I don't know... maybe "Pentium-M" or something like that. ;)

Netburst was the marketing department's dream: GHz, GHz, GHz. It's so much simpler to convince people that a chip is faster when it has a big number after the name. But look at what happens when you let the marketing department run the company: the K8. And all of a sudden your competition has deals with every OEM out there, and a foot in the server market. Oops. How long do you think it'll take Intel to forget that lesson?


RE: Good News
By TomZ on 9/19/2007 12:40:48 PM , Rating: 1
But remember in business, commercial success is always more important than technical success.


RE: Good News
By Justin Case on 9/19/2007 1:47:34 PM , Rating: 2
Did you miss the 4th paragraph?


RE: Good News
By TomZ on 9/19/2007 2:01:18 PM , Rating: 1
I guess I didn't get that out of the 4th paragraph.


RE: Good News
By theapparition on 9/19/2007 3:11:25 PM , Rating: 3
Justin, not one point of your reply contradicted any part of mine. I'm not quite sure why you had to justify something. P4 (Netburst) is a resounding success by ANY metric you use to define it.

I did find your original comment pretty funny, though.

quote:
Commercial success is hardly proof of inherent quality or technological superiority

In a business, commercial success is the only thing that matters. AMD would have killed for that level of success.

Why don't you ask 3DFx what its like to have technological superiority?

quote:
In terms of performance it certainly didn't take AMD long to surpass Netburst (Netburst was even slower than the PIII, at first, and the K7 was already faster than the PIII). The only thing that gave Netburst an advantage over the K7 (in a very restricted range of applications) was SSE2.

I suggest you go back and look at benchmarks again. P4 was never slower than P3, maybe IPC, but who cares, the MHz advantage made up for it and then some. All P4's (from Willamette up) competed very favorably to AMD's current offerings. Some wins, some losses for both camps, but overall, until the Athlon64 went up against Prescott, the P4 was very competitive. Lest you not forget the early Athlons that were space heaters without thermal diodes. How many of those chips burned up. Such short memories we have. SSE2 did help intel in some benchmarks, but in others without SSE optimizations, the clockspeed advantage of the P4 gave it the win. Even prescott won a few benchmarks (SSE assisted) against the latest Athlon64's. If you ran that particular application (mostly media encoding) would you still think the design was "inferior"?

quote:
Intel sold more chips because they have better marketing

Your point? Sounds like going the MHz route was the right decision then.

quote:
But the point is that Intel would have sold just as many units (probably more) if they'd gone with an evolutionary, power-efficient design based on the PIII.

Speculation??? In the current climate of MHz wars, that could have been "chink-in-the-armour" that AMD was looking for. AMD chose a complete redesign because they HAD to, not because they are some great saviour helping us from evil, but because that was necessary to compete. And it was a very smart move on AMD's part.

quote:
It's so much simpler to convince people that a chip is faster when it has a big number after the name.

Yep, and once again, your point is???? Wasn't that the reason for the AMD rating.

I'm for competition, and don't have allegiance to either brand. But I don't like mis-information. You obviously no nothing about business, these processor roadmaps are developed years in advance. It takes a lot of time for developement. Sucess in business is also about hitting the market at the right time with the right product. Sometimes companies get it right, other times they don't.

Tell you what, you keep your head in the sand and blindly buy AMD. I'll look at the facts and make the best processor choice from the models that are available.


RE: Good News
By Justin Case on 9/19/2007 3:25:43 PM , Rating: 2
> not one point of your reply contradicted any part of mine.

Not one point of your message had anything to do with the subject of the discussion, and your conclusion was simply wrong. Oregonian2 said that "Intel used to have multiple teams competing on the same project; whomever was best got produced and released and the other group had their work canceled."

And I said "makes you wonder who lost to Netburst" (meaning the Pentium-M, obviously, which got pushed to the background).

You took that as an opportunity to praise the decision to push Netburst as a brilliant move on Intel's part, when it was precisely that move that let AMD catch up (and surpass) Intel in terms of performance and technology (indirectly leading to the death of the IPF), strike previously unthinkable deals with large OEMs, and get a significant chunk of the lucrative server and supercomputing markets. And when Intel finally had to wake up, guess what they used as a starting point for their new CPU generation. The good old Pentium-M.

Netburst the most successful CPU generation in Intel's history? If you think that, then (to quote your own post) "You obviously no nothing about business". [sic]


RE: Good News
By theapparition on 9/19/2007 4:07:20 PM , Rating: 2
quote:
And I said "makes you wonder who lost to Netburst" (meaning the Pentium-M, obviously, which got pushed to the background).

And I replied that I wouldn't be ashamed to lose to the team that came out with the most successful processor in Intel's history. There's something seriously wrong with you if you can't understand that.

quote:
Netburst the most successful CPU generation in Intel's history? If you think that, then (to quote your own post) "You obviously no nothing about business".

I define successful as the processor that sold the most in Intel's history and generated the most CPU profit in their history. In fact, P4 has the largest user base of ANY CPU processor. How in the hell do you define success?

Name me one processor that has sold as well???
I won't hold my breath waiting.

quote:
You took that as an opportunity to praise the decision to push Netburst as a brilliant move on Intel's part, when it was precisely that move that let AMD catch up (and surpass) Intel in terms of performance and technology

AMD only surpassed netburst in the end. Everyone seems to forget this. I personally think intel held on to the design to long. You usually see this with some companies, they get lazy. Because the existing design is so successful. Get it.

I'm not trying to argue which is better, but to say the Netburst was a flop is just plain wrong.

quote:
get a significant chunk of the lucrative server and supercomputing markets.

AMD will still have that because of the superiour scaling advantage due to the IMC, and that's the only reason they are enjoying the server market. Pentium-M wouldn't have helped them there, as you suggest.


RE: Good News
By Justin Case on 9/19/2007 5:03:34 PM , Rating: 2
You seem to think Intel's success is measured by how many processors they sell in abstract. It's not. It's measured by how many processors they sell relative to their competitors.

Intel sold a lot of "Pentium 4" units (which was the brand name given to several different CPUs, by the way) because they had that particular product in the market for a long time, because they spent a lot of money marketing it (sometimes with claims that made Apple sound grounded), and because there were a lot of people in the world buying computers.

They still lost market share (and, in many markets, exclusivity) to their rivals. And that is how one measures the commercial success of a product: was the company in a better position before or after betting on that product? If the market grows by 40% and a company grows by 20%, that's not a success.

The K7 and K8 were great products, but if Intel had kept doing what they do best (letting technology drive their business) instead of massively screwing up with Netburst, we'd still be wondering if Dell was ever going to buy AMD chips, and companies needing 64-bit systems would be buying Itaniums.

Your attempt to shoot off in multiple directions with this post doesn't invalidate the fact that your original claim was complete nonsense. The idea that Netburst was Intel's "most successful product ever" is just too ridiculous to waste any more of my time with.


RE: Good News
By TomZ on 9/19/2007 5:55:30 PM , Rating: 2
quote:
You seem to think Intel's success is measured by how many processors they sell in abstract. It's not. It's measured by how many processors they sell relative to their competitors.

That definition of success is just as valid as any number of other definitions of success for Intel. And if you look at what Intel shareholders really want - increasing share price and/or dividends - the number of processors they sell relative to competitors may or may not be important in reaching that goal.


RE: Good News