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Intel

Intel 32/64-bit Nocona CPU 244

Posted by CmdrTaco from the bits-bytes-and-mips dept.
OCGeek writes "A picture of the upcoming Nocona processor of the Xeon family that has 64-bit extensions known as Intel EM64T has appeared on VR-Zone website. Nocona will have 604 pins and supports HyperThreading, SSE3, PCI Express, DDR2, Vanderpool technology."
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Intel 32/64-bit Nocona CPU More

Intel 32/64-bit Nocona CPU

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  • Feel sorry for VR-Zone (Score:5, Funny)

    by jtharpla ( 531787 ) <jtharp.smalldark@net> on Sunday March 21, 2004 @01:03PM (#8627806) Homepage
    They made the mistake to have not one, but two featured stories on Slashdot today. No wonder their site is down, LOL

  • In case of slashdotting (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 21, 2004 @01:03PM (#8627813)
    Here is the picture:

    +--+
    | |
    +--+

  • Where do they get their sample units? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 21, 2004 @01:04PM (#8627815)
    Just for starters, notice that all the hardware sites get their test units from the manufacturers. In other words, they call the manu and say 'please send me a free hard drive to test for a review'. The manu then tries out 5 units to find the one that works best and sends it.

    Consumers Reports, on the other hand, goes to the store and buys a random unit, same as you or I might.

    Personally, I trust www.storagereview.com, but they do the same thing.

    • How else are they going to get early reviews? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by brucmack ( 572780 ) on Sunday March 21, 2004 @01:29PM (#8628019)
      These sites are almost always reviewing products that haven't hit the market yet. They can't just go out and buy a retail unit if there aren't any available yet.

      This is also how they can get away with paper launches... Make a few samples available to the reviewers to make it seem like the processor is available. In these cases, usually the review sample is such an early revision that anything a consumer touches probably works better.
      • unlikely. Earlier revisions are often quite a bit more robust than the final product. They tend to make it work first, then whittle out as much cost as possible.
        • You haven't done any development of complicated ICs, have you? Getting a new chip to run even partially is a major accomplishment. Following revisions are used to get it fully working, and when it's "close enough" samples are released. After it's fully working it may be revised to improve performance if there is an extreme market demand for higher performance, but only rarely to make it smaller (i.e. cheaper) until a process shrink is available. Possibly, troubleshooting circuits might be incorporated in ea

    • But don't forget... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Kjella ( 173770 ) on Sunday March 21, 2004 @01:46PM (#8628122) Homepage
      Just for starters, notice that all the hardware sites get their test units from the manufacturers. In other words, they call the manu and say 'please send me a free hard drive to test for a review'. The manu then tries out 5 units to find the one that works best and sends it.

      ...that there's such things as rated speeds. For a CPU that would be something like "This CPU is rated at 3.0 GHz, but it'll overclock to 3.6 GHz". Maybe the average consumer CPU won't overclock to that. But it's a pretty sure thing it *will* work at 3.0GHz, and that's the benchmarks I read.

      As for harddisks, I imagine they find one with no remapped sectors (a "perfect" disk) but otherwise, I doubt they can do much either without rigging the specs. There's simply not much room for variability these days. Maybe they have a perfectly balanced/aligned disk that could do more than 7200rpm, but that's a different story.

      Kjella

      • Re:But don't forget... (Score:5, Insightful)

        by InfiniteWisdom ( 530090 ) on Sunday March 21, 2004 @02:48PM (#8628435) Homepage
        There was this story a while back about how manufacturers send units that are far better than the retail unit to reviewers.

        For example, Samsung sent the reviewers LCD monitors with a 700:1 contrast ratio, while the off-the-shelf ones have only 450:1

        http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/10/29/1352 20 9&mode=thread&tid=137&tid=149&tid=98&tid=9 9
    • Consumers Reports, on the other hand, goes to the store and buys a random unit, same as you or I might.

      Except that consumer reports is biased and gives crap reviews. They seem to favor a certain set of same manufacturers.

  • Re:I don't get Congress. (Score:2, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Nobody's getting shut out of the DVD player business.

    Perhaps you missed the whole DeCSS [harvard.edu] issue? "Without licensed DVD players for Linux and other operating systems, an entire class of computer users is completely cut off from viewing DVDs."

  • Pictures of a CPU (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 21, 2004 @01:05PM (#8627831)
    Phwoar! I'll have some of that.

    Slashdot. Pornography for nerds.

  • EM64T? (Score:5, Funny)

    by ultrabot ( 200914 ) on Sunday March 21, 2004 @01:05PM (#8627832)
    EM64T

    Remember, it's spelled x86-64.

  • If they used "Ultimate Cooling Technology" (Score:5, Funny)

    by BabyDave ( 575083 ) on Sunday March 21, 2004 @01:05PM (#8627837)

    ... would they call it a "Sno-Cona"?

  • First time I've heard of it. I know about all the other stuff mentioned but not this. And now It's slashdotted on top of all.

    Anyone know?
    • Yeah, it's a technology few [texas-on-line.com] know about.

    • Re:What's Vanderpool? (Score:5, Informative)

      by Arlet ( 29997 ) on Sunday March 21, 2004 @01:18PM (#8627949)
      A chip technology that will be available within five years, code-named Vanderpool, will allow users to partition the processor inside their computers. In a demonstration, Otellini used a PC to beam an episode of "The Simpsons" to a plasma TV, while another Intel executive booted and rebooted a game with the same machine.

      From here [com.com]
      • Vanderpool is basically a re-optimization of priorities and costs. Read this for more:
        http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=14289
        Intel won't say shit about it if you ask, I have several times. I was at both the IDF demos on it, and they said all of nothing technical. I found out anyway. :)

        That said, what is Pellston and Foxton? I know one of them.....

        -Charlie
      • "In a demonstration, Otellini used a PC to beam an episode of "The Simpsons" to a plasma TV, while another Intel executive booted and rebooted a game with the same machine."

        So they know how the television DRM debate will work out then...

      • talking about some crappy Intel CPU because the AS/400 (iSeries) has done this for quite some time and the RS/6000 (pSeries) will be able to do this before the end of this year with the announcement of Power5.

    • Vanderpool = Virtualization (Score:5, Informative)

      by YetAnotherGeekGuy ( 715152 ) on Sunday March 21, 2004 @01:23PM (#8627985)
      Intel talked about this at the last developers conference. Its the ability to run OSes and applications in partitions that are protected from trashing each other. Here's a blurb from one of the keynote addresses [intel.com] (about halfway down):

      You may remember at the last IDF, Paul Otellini in his keynote did a demonstration and introduced a new technology, a new star "T" called Vanderpool Technology or VT. In that demo, he was in a home environment where he demonstrated by creating different stations in a virtualized station. You are able to run your PVR in one partition and the games in another partition without interfering with each other.

      VT has applications not just in the digital home but also in the digital office. What are some of these usage models? Let's take a look. VT, likewise, can be used in business computers to create different partitions, to provide an IT partition where the IT mission-critical applications are well protected and not compromised by the user. At the same time, it can create partitions that can provide legacy support. In other words, applications that may not run under the new operating system.

      Now, this is the kind of thing that's actually fairly common encountered in both large enterprises as well as more medium business.

      An example we see in accounting software or asset tracking software, they're written and validated on an old operating system that have not been reported or validated.

      As an example, my sister is a dentist and she has a billing system on her computer. She wouldn't dare to upgrade it because there's no support of porting that billing system to a new OS. And as a result, she continues to run on old hardware, old OSs, that expose herself to productivity and security issues. Not a good situation.

      So let's take a look at how this actually works. I'd like to invite Jason Davidson out here to show us how VT benefits the enterprise.

      (Demo begins and ends.)

      BILL SIU: So in the coming several years, we'll be working with many of our business colleagues, many of you present here, to develop this capability and bring this kind of improvement to the enterprise. We think this is of just great value to manageability, providing both end user benefits as well as IT value.



      One assumes the demo shows them crashing an application yet the other application keeps on working.
      • Let's look at this just a teeny bit closer: this technology would also allow (for example) a DVD player application to run in its own dedicated window (or even on its own dedicated screen) WITHOUT providing ANY ABILITY AT ALL to interact with other applications!

        OMG I cannot believe you are all so blind! THIS IS THE EVIL TECHNOLOGY! RUN AWAY! NOCONA WILL KILL LINUX! NO MORE RIPPING DVDS! OH NOOOOOOO!

  • Whoa buzzwords! (Score:5, Funny)

    by splerdu ( 187709 ) on Sunday March 21, 2004 @01:13PM (#8627901)
    In anticipation of intel's move away from MHz numbers and confusing names, I predict the nonoca will adopt the name "Intel Xeon Championship Edition."

    • Re:Whoa buzzwords! (Score:5, Funny)

      by Stevyn ( 691306 ) on Sunday March 21, 2004 @01:35PM (#8628059)
      That is only compatible with Windows XP Longhorn Professional XPR Edition.NET

      Man, what ever happened to naming software like DOS?
    • I think they'll buy a race track and name it the Nocona Speedway.
    • It's easier to predict names than functions, if I remember correctly Merced was supposed to be 64-bit RISC at first.

      That's what is called marketing without bluff, we will release XZY product, which will have really wonderfull functions. If you see, no mistakes about prediction.

      In my other opinion, AMD has take over the CPU market, the only two faults AMDs in the past had (except extreme wish to get at the sun temperature) were.

      1. Trying to be Intel compatible on hardware layer, if I understand correctly

    • Re:Whoa buzzwords! (Score:5, Informative)

      by Jeff DeMaagd ( 2015 ) on Sunday March 21, 2004 @02:05PM (#8628237) Homepage Journal
      I predict the nonoca will adopt the name "Intel Xeon Championship Edition."

      You laugh now, but it's already been done with Serverworks chipsets.

      You know, a company called Serverworks (I think part of Broadcom now), had used "Champion" as their first Xeon chipset at 66MHz FSB, Champion II for 100MHz FSB, Champion III for the 133MHz chips, and Champion IV which is now renamed "Grand Champion" for the current 400 and 533 MHz FSB, with HE, LE, SL, HE-SL and WS sub variants. HE is a quad CPU chipset, the rest ar dual, I haven't looked to see what the other differences are.

      See for yourself:

      Broadcom Grand Champion chipsets & more [broadcom.com]

  • Hey... you Linux geeks get all the cool toyz! (Score:3, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 21, 2004 @01:13PM (#8627912)
    Why can't I get this to run on my WXP machine? I have XP Pro installed....
    You linux geeks get all the good toyz!!
    Darn you, Darn you to Redmond!

    What do I get?

    Well.. I guess I do get all the neat patches.

  • Re:I think we all know what is coming (Score:1, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Hmmm, these kind of sites are becoming a nuisance.

    Sorry, that website uses broken embed tags and Windows-specific registry CLSIDs to point to quicktime player. I don't have a "registry" or a "quick time" player. For those of us who choose our own browser helper applications (instead of it being decided by a "registry") here is the relevant link [mac.com].

  • I can see that processor being unpopular... (Score:3, Funny)

    by marco_craveiro ( 551065 ) on Sunday March 21, 2004 @01:33PM (#8628044) Journal
    ...on portugal and brasil... just google for cona and you'll see what i mean :-)

  • Some of those are chipset features... (Score:5, Informative)

    by brucmack ( 572780 ) on Sunday March 21, 2004 @01:33PM (#8628050)
    Support for PCI Express and DDR2 are dependent on the chipset, not the processor, in Intel CPUs. So saying that the Nocona processors support PCI Express and DDR2 is pretty stupid... Any Intel processor could use them so long as they were running on a chipset that did.

    Of course, Intel normally releases new chipsets with a new revision of a processor family, but that is another matter entirely. Since the site is down, I have no idea if this is discussed at all.

  • Vanderpool good for linux? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by cookie_cutter ( 533841 ) on Sunday March 21, 2004 @01:36PM (#8628065)
    From what I've read in some other comments, vanderpool could let you run two operating systems at once.

    If this could be done efficiently, and in a way which allowed users to easily switch between the two OSes, one could run linux and windows simultaneously. Then, instead of having to use a second rate application for those apps which haven't been replicated in the linux world, one could easily switch back to windows for those few necessary apps which were holding one back from trying out linux.

    Linux adoption would go up as people find it easier to try it out without abandoning their familiar windows apps, which leads to more linux development, which results in more replacement of those windows apps(since there is still the cost benefit to switching to linux).

    • Or you could use vmware (or eventually some other things whose names I cannot remember, linux-on-windows though) and run a linux virtual machine. Why use windows as the host OS? Games, man, games :) This is not QUITE as good as being able to run them side by side of course but you can have your full linux environment.
    • At one point in high school, I was installing Windows 95 on a Mac for my Computer Teacher. (Read on for how, no flames about it not being possible please). We had a PCI card with it's own Intel processor and ram on it. Using apple+enter would switch to the second processor. Both would run simultaneously. A similar setup should be possible for a purely Intel/AMD machine and produce better performance.
      • I had one of those at work. IIRC the Apple branded cards were made for the 6100 and the 7200. It mostly sucked, since it didn't have its own NIC and relied a lot on the host OS for IO, and Mac OS 7.x or 8.x really bit hard for IO even for native Mac apps, let alone having MacOS encapsulate the HDD for the Windows system. Running Windows 95 REALLY sucked, since I don't think there were truly native mode drivers for a lot of the hardware.

        Orange Micro made a line of cards which I think might have included a

    • Vanderpool would switch me to Intel. (Score:1, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Don't get me wrong, I love AMD and only buy
      AMD for myself. If Vanderpool works the way
      I'm hearing it's supposed to..... I have a lot
      of customers who can use that technology YESTERDAY!!!
      Last year even!

      Please bring this about in an AMD-64 Version Pleaaaaaaase!!!!
      • Easy to get - IBM Mainframe LPARs are exactly this. Divide processor/memory/etc into separate sections (note that IBM has two levels of dividing resources - LPARs at the hardware level, VM does it at the software level).

        • It's not just the mainframes. The iSeries (AS/400) can do this, including sub-processor partitioning, as well as their pSeries (RS/6000, i.e. UNIX) line. With the release of Power5 this year, the pSeries line will get virtual I/O and sub-processor partitioning.

          Maybe you meant one of these when you said mainframe.

  • Woo, everything including the kitchen sink (Score:5, Funny)

    by greygent ( 523713 ) on Sunday March 21, 2004 @01:38PM (#8628079) Homepage
    I was really worried until the end of the snippet when Intel mentioned Dance Dance Revolution 2 support...

    • My PC has a Pentium III 866 MHz, and it supports a port of DDR (not just 2nd Mix but all the way to 8th Mix through bumper packs) just fine through the StepMania [stepmania.com] simulator. If you want to contribute AMD64 builds of StepMania, go right ahead; StepMania is free software.

    • We'll have to wait to see if AMD jumps to match this...
  • Ummm.... isn't this like MacOS running VirtualPC? I mean, really, what's the big difference?
  • Nocona will have 604 pins and supports HyperThreading, SSE3, PCI Express, DDR2, Vanderpool technology.

    Soon they won't need the actual x86 instruction set at all!

  • New ... but no Cigar (Score:2, Informative)

    by Ozric ( 30691 )
    Buy Opterons .... They scale better. Dual systems.. its about neck and neck with Xeons but go to quads and the Opterons eat Xeons for Lunch. Oh .. and the Opterons are cheaper too. It's a no brainer folks. It wall take alot more then copying AI64 from AMD to put the Xeons on top. Indeed soon with how the Opterons scale they will eat up the Itantics too.

    • Re:New ... but no Cigar (Score:1, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Depends on the tasks set for the CPU's. For some tasks, dual-cpu's are the sweet spot for performance and cost. And if you're running renders, physics calcs etc a lot, the Xeons are the way to go, and for databases etc, the Opterons are the way to go. And besides, the dual Xeons have beaten dual Opterons, despite the Opterons running in 64-bit mode, with all those extra registers.... Now just think about what the Xeons will be able to do when they also get to play with all those extra registers.
      • No .. its the HT links and on board Memory Controls that help the Opterons win. The beat them 32bit or 64bit. I have not seen any test that show Dual Xeons doing anything better then the Opterons with the exception of puting out more heat. Please show us a Link to said test.
    • Sure.. it's easy to say just by Opterons... and you are right in that Intel will not have the Hypertransport linkage that makes Opteron do quite well in SMP, especially low-end SMP up to 8 CPUs, however, with Intel coming into the picture with higher clock speeds, look for Intel's entry to trounce the Opteron on single and dual systems. Given AMD's absolutely horrible track record with high end chipsets (e.g. MPX), look for Intel to obliterate AMD where it counts... revenue.

      Opteron has coolness factor bu

  • So, is this a 32 bit CPU that can act like a 64 bit CPU or a 16 bit CPU (based on it's 8 bit predecessor) or
    is it a 64bit CPU that can act like a 32 bit CPU or it's 16bit predecessor (which is, itself based on an 8 bit design).?

    I can understand why Intel wanted to go to a clean 64bit CPU implementation, but It's a bit late in the game for them.

  • I wonder how long it will take Intel to move 64 bit technology into the P4 line?

    By adding it in the Xeon, they legitimize the technology. But, they don't put it in the consumer chips. So, this makes the Athlon 64 a lot more attractive.. Compared to the Intel chips, the A64 has high end technology in a low cost chip.

    If AMD ever completes their unfortunate socket shuffle, the A64 could really take off.
    • The Socket shuffle is only for no-smp workstation CPUs. The Opteron chips will remain socket 940.
    • To tell you the truth, wonders tell me if the P4 line is still going to exist. It really looks as if Intel's scrambling inside to move all the P4 based technology up to the server market, and move in Pentium M technology into the desktop. Starting at 2GHz, a Pentium M could kick the pants off of a 3.5GHz Pentium 4, and produce far less heat in the process. This will allow them to really get back into the game. If 64-bit extensions really get popular for some unknown reason (next version of Windows perha
      • Good points.. I think they already have a successor to the P4 in development (whatever they call it). But, maybe a generation beyond that will combine PentiumX and PentiumM, as I think they see the heat/power as major problems going forward (although, they may even be more problematic on the server side with the small 1U or Blade servers).

        You're right about the 64 bit thing. Realistically it's not that important for most users. But, I think it's a big risk to Intel anyway. They will battle the per
  • but does it have the proverbial kitchen sink?

    Or is the heat sink merely that heavy?

    Juuussst kidding. :)

  • Fade to intro: granny is sipping tea while working on the computer. She's checking some new recipes online and sending an e-mail to grandson jimmy. She hits the 'Send' button in Outlook and WHA-ZAM! that email is sent so fast by her new Intel 64-bit Nacona that it's almost illegal.. Wowza.

  • Xeopterons (Score:3, Informative)

    by Sivar ( 316343 ) <charlesnburns[ AT ]gmail DOT com> on Sunday March 21, 2004 @05:34PM (#8629125)
    I prefer to get Opterons over "Xeopterons", if for no other reason than because Intel blatantly ripped off the 64-bit extensions from AMD, and didn't even bother mentioning [kerneltrap.org] them in the "ia32e" specification documentation.

    Granted, AMD is making designs based on Intel's ancient and decrepit architecture, but at least they acknowledge this and give Intel credit where credit is due. Many of AMD's AMD64 technology papers are published as the differences between Intel's IA32 papers and their design.

    Of course, the fact that Opterons scale better due to not sharing all memory bandwidth between CPUs, using HyperTransport for interCPU communication, and having a dedicated and integrated low-latency memory controller for each individual CPU helps in the Opteron-vs-Xeopteron choice as well....

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