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Intel's Kentsfield CPU (top) will be the first quad core desktop chip, Clovertown will be the server equivalent - Courtesy AnandTech.com
According to Intel, it says quad-core for desktops will be ready by 2007

IDF is definitely showcasing a host of exciting technologies, but today Intel showed details of some very interesting technology in regards to where servers and desktops will be heading in 2007. According to company slides, Intel expects to be shipping multi-core Xeon processors based on the Montecito core by mid-year 2006. Targeting the MP segment, Intel's next-generation Tulsa processor will be manufactured using 65nm fabrication technology with large 16MB caches.

For the desktop segment, Intel indicated that Kentsfield will be the first quad-core processor and will be released in Q1 of 2007 after Conroe. During mid-year 2006, Intel will introduce its Bridge Creek platform but it did not indicate whether or not it will be Kentsfield ready. Recently, AMD also indicated that it will be introducing quad-core processors in 2007 for the server segment, but did not talk about the desktop space. According to Intel slides, Kentsfield will be focused on immediately after Conroe.

Intel indicated that quad-core processors will only be needed for the very highest-end desktops. Corporate users and enterprise level productivity software will also be a target for Kentsfield. Tigerton, Intel's quad-core MP processor, will also be released in early 2007.

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RE: Is Super Glue included ?
By ChronoReverse on 3/8/2006 8:23:54 PM , Rating: 2
Indeed. It's still four physicak cores on one die so why is it not a quad-core?

Furthermore, each pair is using a shared cache which is superior to even AMD's point connections.


RE: Is Super Glue included ?
By Xenoterranos on 3/9/2006 1:28:26 AM , Rating: 2
Ok smarty. All four cores on an AMD quad core chip could talk to each other without a single iota's detriment to speed or efficiency. In this frankenstein 4 core thing intel has made, only the cores that are physically conneced can "talk" to eachother via the shared cache; for each pair of cores to talk to the other pair of cores requires traversing the FSB, ie, no better than the frankencore Pentium D's.


RE: Is Super Glue included ?
By JackPack on 3/9/2006 3:04:09 AM , Rating: 2
Having two separate dice allows Intel to mix and match parts with different TDPs and not waste any cores. AMD's solution means low yields. Good luck to AMD finding four adjacent cores all operating at the same speed and TDP with minimal defects.

AMD's solution may be slightly better, but it's pointless if it costs $1500 per chip. Why do you think Intel is offering an Extreme Edition part based on quad-core Kentsfield while AMD isn't offering any quad-core for the desktop?


RE: Is Super Glue included ?
By PrinceGaz on 3/9/2006 5:47:33 AM , Rating: 2
"two seperate dies" is the correct term, not "two seperate dice". The plural of die is dies when talking about CPUs and other manufacturing processes, and dice when talking about cubes (and other polyhedrons) used in games of chance.


By KristopherKubicki (blog) on 3/9/2006 8:24:06 AM , Rating: 2
RE: Is Super Glue included ?
By Viditor on 3/11/2006 7:51:52 PM , Rating: 2
quote:
Good luck to AMD finding four adjacent cores all operating at the same speed and TDP with minimal defects

I don't know...they seem to have had no problem with the same thing on dual core, and their yeilds are extraordinarily high.


By ChronoReverse on 3/9/2006 5:38:17 PM , Rating: 2
So that makes it... still a quad core chip. Your point?

In any case, each pair talks to each other even better than with a point-to-point connect. Futhermore, our very own Anandtech has shown that the benefits from the AMD solution (while theoretically much better) don't seem to (currently) translate to measureable performance boosts (on the desktop level).

Which, frankly, isn't surprising on the desktop level. How many tasks can you think of would use multiple cores with huge inter-thread communications? On server systems definitely, on desktops not so much.


Don't get me wrong, I like AMD, all of my machines are either AthlonXPs or Athlon64s. My last Intel CPU was a Pentium 3.

But if Intel has the better CPU in 2007 (my next upgrade time) with a price/performance better than AMD, there is absolutely no reason I wouldn't buy it.


RE: Is Super Glue included ?
By Viditor on 3/9/2006 6:26:29 PM , Rating: 2
quote:
Furthermore, each pair is using a shared cache which is superior to even AMD's point connections

This touches on the problem...I/O.
A large part of the reason that Smithfield and the other MCM dual cores don't perform nearly as well as the X2 (or Conroe for that matter) is that they must communicate with each other through the FSB. The quad core Intel is announcing for the desktop will have a few familiar problems (IMHO):

1. It will still use the MESI (Modified Exclusive Shared Invalid) cache coherency protocol, which has a greater latency penalty than the MOESI (Modified Owner Exclusive Shared Invalid) protocol that AMD uses.

2. Cache coherency between the modules will need to go through the FSB, and considering all of the other data is going through the FSB as well, this is going to have to be a much faster and wider FSB (or even 2 FSBs) than Intel has announced on any of their current models.

3. Based on current Conroe specs, a quad core desktop will have to have:
a. 8 to 16 MB of cache (which would make it about the size and cost of Alaska), or
b. Less cache/core, which will hit performance fairly hard, or
c. Move to an L3 cache model, which is a completely new design...


RE: Is Super Glue included ?
By Viditor on 3/9/2006 6:32:59 PM , Rating: 2
I need to read more...I guess the answer is "3a". 16MB of cache is absolutely massive! This means that ~75% of the die will be nothing but L2!


RE: Is Super Glue included ?
By ChronoReverse on 3/9/2006 6:57:38 PM , Rating: 2
Indeed. While I'm not exactly a big fan of that, if it works AND Intel prices it reasonable, I can live it. Obviously it won't be at first, but it's not like I need quad-cores right either (our servers are small enough that dual processors are quite enough thank you).


RE: Is Super Glue included ?
By Viditor on 3/10/2006 11:45:34 AM , Rating: 2
quote:
if it works AND Intel prices it reasonable, I can live it

Price is a good point...
I don't know if you remember, but AMD signed a license with ISI at the end of last year for SOI cache made using Z-Ram.
Z-Ram gets 5 times the density of normal cache (and only works with SOI). In addition, it utilizes far less power than normal cache memory...
Imagine a quad core Opteron that has only a 50% increase in footprint vs dual core at the same node, but has double the cache and double the cores...and uses the same power.
Add to that AMD's new strained silicon process, and I think we will see AMD keep the server crown for awhile...at least until their nextgen chips come out.


RE: Is Super Glue included ?
By Questar on 3/10/2006 4:28:09 PM , Rating: 2
So what's the problem? The performance of a top end Porche is generated 85% by air. Is that bad?

Quit trying spread FUD. It doesn't matter how performance is created as long as it exists.


RE: Is Super Glue included ?
By Questar on 3/10/2006 3:43:12 PM , Rating: 2
2. Thanks to cache partitioning coherency mostly becomes a non-issue. You don't know how much traffic will be traveling over the FSB, so you can't say how wide or fast it will need to be.


RE: Is Super Glue included ?
By Viditor on 3/11/2006 7:46:57 PM , Rating: 2
quote:
Thanks to cache partitioning coherency mostly becomes a non-issue

You should go back and read the posts again...
Cache partitioning only occurs within each die. The quad cores will have 2 dice per CPU, so coherency must be maintained via the FSB!
While I can't say how much traffic there will be (nor can I answer "how long is a piece of string"...), if you're going to actually USE the 4 cores it should be at least double that of a dual core...QED. In addition, the quad core must use the same FSB for coherency between dice...


RE: Is Super Glue included ?
By Questar on 3/12/2006 9:02:10 PM , Rating: 2
Your first false assumtion is that both L2 caches must always be coherent. They only must be cohent for data that resides in both caches - in other words in threads that sharing resource amomgst the cores. Independent threads do not need their written data sent to the other cache.

We can go on and on about other things, such as how all memory writes must transverse the FSB anyway and we really don't have any idea what - if any - impact cache updates have.

So we will just wait and see in a few months.


RE: Is Super Glue included ?
By Viditor on 3/15/2006 8:47:45 AM , Rating: 2
quote:
Your first false assumtion is that both L2 caches must always be coherent


I don't think I made that assumption...
I'll quote from a white paper done at Berkely:

"Not surprisingly, we find that caches are effective at reducing the processor traffic to memory. We observe improvements in L2 cache miss rates for L2 cache sizes up to 1 MB, the largest available for this processor. While larger caches are effective, this benefit is not without con-sequences. Coherence traffic, in the form of cache misses to dirty data in other processors’ caches, increases as caches get bigger, and as the number of processors increases. We find that the exclusive state of the four-state MESI cache coherence protocol is under-utilized for multi-processor configurations, and could likely be omitted in favor of a simpler three-state protocol. Finally, multipro-cessor scaling of this workload is good, but even modest memory system utilization degrades application memory latency, limiting database throughput..."

http://www.hpl.hp.com/personal/Kimberly_Keeton/Ber...


RE: Is Super Glue included ?
By Questar on 3/10/2006 4:33:21 PM , Rating: 2
Oh and by the way, I do want to commend you on your argumentative skills. If I hadn't taken logic classes myself, I could have fallen for some of your arguments.

You have been very skillful in taking a P4 argument and applying it to Conroe. Of course they fall apart because you don't know the Conroe architechure.


RE: Is Super Glue included ?
By Viditor on 3/11/2006 7:48:42 PM , Rating: 2
quote:
You have been very skillful in taking a P4 argument and applying it to Conroe. Of course they fall apart because you don't know the Conroe architechure

And yours have fallen apart because we aren't talking about Conroe... :)


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