Intel demonstrates Xeon Nehalem EX, its first eight-core chip

Intel today demonstrated and presented details about the Nehalem EX architecture, which will be the foundation of the new generation of Xeon processors, composed of new technological advances to increase the performance of computers based on this platform. The new line will be the successor to the one currently on the Mac Pro.

[youtube] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BQ4shSQJTd0 [/ youtube]

The design of these new chips, favored by the manufacturer's Hyperthreading technology, supports up to eight cores and 16 different processes running at the same time, with 24MB of cache. The performance gain brought by them is the greatest provided by the company's history in the transition from one platform to another.

The new Nehalem EX are also highlighted by their enormous bandwidth, seven times greater than that of the current Xeon. This is provided by the presence of not one, but four Quick Path interfaces in place of the front-side bus. This provides a point-to-point link between the processor and memory, peripherals, storage disks and expansion slots, with no frequency limitations.

Processors based on the Nehalem EX architecture are scheduled for production from the second quarter. At first, only large servers and machines from major manufacturers should be launched with these new chips. Before it was released, it was thought that the current Mac Proreceived these new chips.