Santa Clara (CA) – Just a few weeks ahead of its developer forum in Beijing, Intel has provided an UPDATE on the 45 nm Penryn processor family as well as the successor of the first generation Core architecture, which goes by the code-name “Nehalem.” The big news is the Intel will depart from the traditional front side bus and integrate the memory controller into the CPU.

If that sounds like a familiar concept to you, then your instincts are right: AMD has been using an integrated memory controller for some time now in its Athlon 64/Opteron processors. And even for Intel this move has been more a matter of “when”, rather than “if”: Intel executives were routinely asked by journalists at briefings if an integrated memory controller (IMC) makes sense for Intel – a question which Intel routinely answered with the phrase the options are evaluated and that such a solutions would be introduced when it makes sense.

Apparently, it makes sense to introduce an IMC with the Nehalem core, which will replace Core-based products starting in the second half of 2008. 45 nm Nehalem processors will arrive with up to EIGHT cores and will include a “highly integrated” memory controller, REFERRED to as “Nehalem system interconnect,” that aims to “deliver industry leading performance and capability for its targeted market segments,” Intel said. Basically, the technology (previously also known as Common System Interface or short “CSI”) represents a point-to-point serial bus, which removes a bandwidth bottleneck that has been building up in the front side bus over the past years.

As reported by TG Daily in February, Nehalem will also bring back Hyperthreading that was originally introduced with the Pentium 4 series of processors and separated the processor in one physical and one virtual core. With Nehalem, Hyperthreading will be NAMED “simultaneous multi-threading” and offer a maximum of 16 threads (with 8 physical cores). An interesting move is also the announcement that Nehalem processors will be available with integrated graphics, which is very reminiscent of AMD’s Fusion processor, which is believed to debut at the end of 2009 or early 2010. Intel calls Nehalem the first “truly dynamic and scalable microarchitecture” and said that it would provide more details further about it down the road.

full story

www.tgdaily.com/content/view/31408/135/

Over-compensation much?

Eh, I wouldn't mind having one though.