Introducing "Core i7", Intel's Next Generation CPU I just stumbled across the latest news on Intel's next-gen CPU dubbed Core i7. Intel will make an announcement about this processor on August 11 with release in the 4th Quarter of this year. Price range is from $284 all the way over $1000. And I just upgraded my computer too with a Quad Core Q9450! Technology: Two, four, or eight cores 731 million transistors for the quad core variant 45 nm manufacturing process Integrated memory controller supporting DDR3 SDRAM and between one and six memory channels[citation needed] Integrated graphics processor (IGP) located off-die, but in the same CPU package A new point-to-point processor interconnect, the Intel QuickPath Interconnect, replacing the legacy front side bus Simultaneous multithreading, which enables two threads per core. Simultaneous multithreading has not been present on a consumer Intel processor since 2006 with the Pentium 4 and Pentium EE. Unlike the SMT implementations on the Pentium 4 and the Atom, SMT on Nehalem is referred to as 'MTT'. Native (monolithic, i.e. all processor cores on a single die) quad- and octo-core (8) processors The following caches: 32 KB L1 instruction and 32 KB L1 data cache per core 256 KB L2 cache per core 2-3 MB L3 cache per core shared by all cores 33% more in-flight micro-ops than Conroe Second-level branch predictor and second-level Translation Lookaside Buffer Modular blocks of components such as cores that can be added and subtracted for varying market segments Performance: 1.1x to 1.25x the single-threaded performance or 1.2x to 2x the multithreaded performance at the same power level 30% lower power usage for the same performance According to a preview from AnandTech "expect a 20-50% overall advantage over Penryn with only a 10% increase in power usage. It looks like Intel is on track to delivering just that in Q4." Sources: http://en.expreview.com/2008/08/08/nehalem-to-become-core-i7-processor/ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nehalem...rchitecture%29
