Saturday, February 23, 2008

Intel To Release Hex-Core Processors

According to Maureen O'Gara from sys-con.com, it seems that Intel is all set to release a processor with Six cores. Yes, you heard me right...six. I think Intel understands that if AMD can start making tri-cores then may be six cores isn't a very bad idea.

The six core or hexacore processor goes by the codename "Dunnington" and has been designed at the Intel Design Center at Bangalore. It is a successor to the Harpertown processors of the Xeon-line of server processors from Intel. It is again supposed to be a sandwich of 3-dies, but this time its 3 dual-core processors that have been stitched together. The cores are sharing a 16MB L3 cache. Like other Penryns, Dunnington still uses a front-side bus. Dunnington is supposed to come at different clock speeds, with a total power consumption of less than 120W.

Intel will be releasing these just before the Nehalem are out and should be an interesting development. AMD on the other hand is just struggling with speed of the processors as well as the manufacturing and releasing of its products. Intel seems to be double of whatever AMD wants to do. AMD Tricore Vs Intel HexaCore.

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