First news of Yorkfield XE (Penryn) and K8L Quads: Q3-2007

[dexvx]

VR-Zone / HKEPC has this news:

http://www.vr-zone.com/?i=4109
http://www.hkepc.com/bbs/itnews.php?tid=679375&starttime=0&endtime=0

Yorkfield XE, which does not seem to be a native Quad-Core design, it seems like a shrunk 45nm Conroe with more cache and higher clock speed (3.46-3.73Ghz 2x6MB L2). Cached data between the 2 sets of CPU's have to be fetched via the FSB (unless they've made the L2 have an interconnect).

On the AMD front, Altair (Athlon X4 and Athlon FX) seems to be the K8L. Its based on 65nm and seems to be the "native" quad core design; however, the L2 cache is still seperated (4x 512KB) albeit there is a unified 2MB L3 cache. Basically, it seems cached data needs to be fetched via L3. Clock speed will be at 2.7-2.9Ghz. There will also be a Dual Core model of Altair named Antares. Antares is Dual Core with 2x 512KB L2 and a shared 2MB L3 cache. This just seems like an Altair with 2 cores disabled (failed cores) and it will run at 2.0 - 2.9Ghz.

No news of IPC for now, so Yorkfield/Altair can be faster or slower than Conroe/X2 clock for clock.

 

[BrownTown]

lol @ the 3.46-3.73Ghz part, not even Intel knows where these parts are gonna end up clocking, let alone some hardware review site. If Intel has 45nm quads clocking that high then AMD is just done for. But since they DONT the quad core competition will still be competative.

 

[dexvx]

Originally posted by: BrownTown
lol @ the 3.46-3.73Ghz part, not even Intel knows where these parts are gonna end up clocking, let alone some hardware review site. If Intel has 45nm quads clocking that high then AMD is just done for. But since they DONT the quad core competition will still be competative.

Its not out of reach, especially at 45nm. Intel's demoed Kentsfield running at 3.73Ghz already (Alan Wake), but obviously thats probably a hand-picked sample on water cooling. The people at XS have Kentsfield clocking around the low 3Ghz mark with good air cooling.

 

[BrownTown]

More like the high 3Ghz mark with air and the high 4Gs with exotic cooling, but XS and reality are far apart. Getting an extra 1000mhz out of a new process in the first introduction isn't something I find all that likely.

 

[dexvx]

Originally posted by: BrownTown
More like the high 3Ghz mark with air and the high 4Gs with exotic cooling, but XS and reality are far apart. Getting an extra 1000mhz out of a new process in the first introduction isn't something I find all that likely.

Who said it was going to be 1000Mhz speed bump? In this year alone the Q6700XE will be clocked at 2.66Ghz. You expect Intel to sleep until Q3 2007? I'd expect incremental speed bumps up to the low 3Ghz mark commercially available from the 65nm Kentsfield. Even if we assume that the Kentsfield will top off around the 3Ghz mark in the retail channel, Penryn @ 3.46Ghz is just a 15% speed bump. Regardless, my point is that a 3.46Ghz 45nm Penryn is not unrealistic.

 

[BrownTown]

its possible of course, but only in speculation, posting tables suggesting that Yorkfield will debut at that clockspeed is very deceptive since some people will take it as fact when really it is unlikely they have many of those currently.

 

[Furen]

Originally posted by: BrownTown
its possible of course, but only in speculation, posting tables suggesting that Yorkfield will debut at that clockspeed is very deceptive since some people will take it as fact when really it is unlikely they have many of those currently.

3.46-3.73 is very likely quite doable. What is holding Intel back is the TDP, not the chip's maximum clock potential (after all, 4GHz+ is attainable on current parts). Remember that this architecture will not just be an improvement on current CPUs but also a die-shrink, which will help tame the TDP.

EDIT: About the AMD parts, am I the only one who finds the names quite cool, in a dorky kind of way? There has been speculation that Rev B (AMD's supposedly "official" name for K8L) will be 40% more "efficient" than the K8 and if this is true then AMD may not be in too bad of a shape to face Yorksfield. Since it looks like the actual execution cores are quite a bit bigger than K8's it may actually be true (each core is about the same size as a 90nm X2 core, and that's at 65nm).

 

[PetNorth]

Altair, Antares... nice names. Do you remember Ben-Hur?

 

[Furen]

Originally posted by: PetNorth
Altair, Antares... nice names. Do you remember Ben-Hur?

I dont remember much of the movie since I saw it when I was very young and haven't gotten around to watching it again, does it include references to those stars?

 

[PetNorth]

yeah... remember horse race, they are two of the four Ben-Hur arabian horses (Altair, Antares, Rigel and Aldebaran)

 

[Furen]

Well, we might get a Rigel and Aldebaran core at some point.

 

[pm]

Well, we might get a Rigel and Aldebaran core at some point.

Or we might get Castor, Deneb and Beteguese... if they are named after constellations instead of Ben-hur's horses. Although I am very impressed that Petnorth can remember the names of Ben-hur's horses... I can barely remember the plot of the movie.

 

[Furen]

Originally posted by: pm

Well, we might get a Rigel and Aldebaran core at some point.

Or we might get Castor, Deneb and Beteguese... if they are named after constellations instead of Ben-hur's horses. Although I am very impressed that Petnorth can remember the names of Ben-hur's horses... I can barely remember the plot of the movie.

All the names mentioned here are stars, not just Ben-Hur horses, hehe. I was just saying that since Rugel and Aldebaran are also the brightest stars of their respective constellations we may actually get cores named after them, too.

 

[PetNorth]

Originally posted by: pm

Well, we might get a Rigel and Aldebaran core at some point.

Or we might get Castor, Deneb and Beteguese... if they are named after constellations instead of Ben-hur's horses. Although I am very impressed that Petnorth can remember the names of Ben-hur's horses... I can barely remember the plot of the movie.

haha well I saw it a lot of years ago for first time, but only some months ago I saw it in TV again

edit: about Yorkfield speeds, I agree with BrownTown... very very optimistic they are. We are talking about retail parts, with default vcore, with stock cooling etc This is a very different issue to an eventual OC ability