6-core Xeon 7400 Processor from Intel. Nehalem processors arriving soon

The Age of dual core processors is slowly passing by, but Processor giants Intel cant wait to unviel more and more Multi-Core processors. Intel unvieled the Xeon 7400 series, formerly called Dunnington in September 2008.(I know I am late to write about it)They are now available in six-core and quad-core models designed to be used in systems with four or more processors.

The Xeon 7400 series offers a performance improvement over its predecessor, the Xeon 7200 series, Intel said. Much of that increase comes from adding a 16MB level 3 cache. The 7400 series processors are the first Xeon chips to use a level 3 cache, which stores data closer to the processor cores, helping to boost overall performance.

The Xeon 7400 chips run at clock speeds up to 2.66GHz and have either four or six cores. They are priced ranging from $856 to $2,729 (approx INR 38,000 to INR 1,22,000). HP, IBM and Dell have made available the Servers featuring these processor chips.

The Xeon 7400 contains all six cores on one piece of silicon, while Intel’s existing line of quad-core Xeon chips pack two pieces of silicon inside a single package. This was possible because the 45-nanometre process used to make the new chip reduces the size of the features on a chip, increases performance and reduces power consumption.

The Xeon 7400 series is the last member of Intel’s Penryn(45nm) chip family. Penryn will be succeeded by a new processor architecture called Nehalem at the end of this Year.

Nearly all the Nehalem processors are expected to feature L3 cache. Nehalem will move the memory controller onto the processor itself, which is likely to speed up memory access considerably.

Related posts:

• Penryn Processors launched By Intel.
• New Core i3, i5 and i7 Processors from Intel & their major Features
• INTEL sees clear way to 10nm Processor Chips
• Intel Centrino-2 (Montevina) Platform launched
• Demo of Moorestown Platform (Successor of Nehalem) by Intel