• Intel Offers Sneak Peek into Roadmap

    Intel Offers Sneak Peek into Roadmap

    Techtree News Staff, Mar 18, 2008 1258 hrs IST

    Intel's roadmap apart, reports seem to suggest that the company is likely working on its "Core 2 Extreme QX9300" quad-core mobile processors, and may release them late this year.

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In a sneak preview of the company roadmap yesterday, Intel mainly spoke about its six-core processors for PCs, hinting also at the possibility of 'Nehalem' replacing 'Core' architecture. "Larrabee" was also spoken about; Intel's competitor to ATI and Nvidia GPUs.

Speaking on the occasion, Pat Gelsinger, senior vice president and general manager (Digital Enterprise Group) of Intel, said the six-core processors codenamed "Dunnington" would ship in the second half of this year. "Dunnington" would be compatible with the 'Caneland' workstation platform, and would feature 16MB of L3 cache, and virtual machine migration technology called FlexMigration.

Commenting on 'Nehalem', Gelsinger said it would go into production in the fourth quarter of this year -- initially at 45nm and later in 2009 at 32nm. Dual-core, quad-core, and even octal-core 'Nehalem' devices would roll out of fabrication before the end of this year. Gelsinger also described "Larrabee" as Intel's "bold view of the transformation of visual computing", adding that it too might be out next year or in 2010.

Intel's roadmap apart, reports seem to suggest that the company is likely working on its "Core 2 Extreme QX9300" quad-core mobile processors, and may release them late this year.

The QX9300 is being manufactured at 45nm, and will have a core frequency of 2.53GHz with 12MB L2 cache and FSB speeds up to 1066MHz. The CPU will come in a socket P package, and will have a maximum Thermal Design Power of 45W. The speculation is that these quad-cores may have a going price of $1,038 per thousand-unit tray quantities.

A first for Intel, experts are of the view that it'll be a few years before these expensive chips become widely available.

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