Intel to add on-die memory controller, point-to-point bus...

[zephyrprime]

...on the Itanium! Ha! Bet you thought I was going to talk about the Conroe or something didn't you?

The next Itanium, codename Tukwila, will be quadcore, have 24MB of cache, an onboard memory controller, and point-to-point differential signalling interconnects.

According to several slides at an HPC conference in Asia, Tukwila will be a quad core part, confirming earlier rumors reported by Ashlee Vance of the Register and Charlie Demerjian of the Inquirer. Tukwila features an on-die FB-DIMM memory controller, which will lower access latency. The FB-DIMM controller likely supports 4 channels of memory, possibly more. As a result of the lower memory latency, Tukwila requires less cache than its predecessor. Montecito featured 27MB of cache, for two processors, while Tukwila is reported to have 6MB of L3 cache per core, or 24MB for each MPU. Preliminary diagrams also indicate that there is on-die switch for traffic between the four cores and caches on each chip. Tukwila will also feature the debut of the Common Systems Interconnect or CSI. CSI is a low latency, point to point, serial interconnect that uses differential signaling.

real world tech

 

[dmens]

CSI is common system interface, so all intel cores will be using this protocol eventually, including x86....

 

[zephyrprime]

Yes, apparently the plan is to have Xeon use CSI eventually.

 

[Maximilian]

Yes i thought you were going to talk about conroe.... thank you for raising my hopes and spoiling my enitre day!! I HOPE YOUR HAPPY!

As for the Itanium, it looks nice, shame almost none of us will ever gat to take advantage of it.

 

[Viditor]

Due in 2009...

 

[compgeek89]

This is so far in the future on the wrong tech it really doesnt apply to us.

 

[TheRyuu]

It took them this much time to figure out that all those things are the future, and yet they put it on the wrong product?

Hopefully Conroe won't be nearly as much of a bandwith hog as the Netburst CPU's are. Intel seems to be stretching out the life the the "old" FSB.

 

[pcoffman]

Originally posted by: zephyrprime
.real world tech

Thx for digging up this article!