Første kig på Intel kommende dual-core Xeon processor




Anandtech har fået lov at se nærmere på Intels nye dual-core Xeon processor, Dempsey, som udelukkende er udviklet til ydelse og intet andet. Den nye cpu er produceret på 65 nanometer teknologi men er stadig Opteron overlegen når det gælder om den største mængde varmeudveksling samt effektforbrug. Til gengæld rykker den. Senere hen vil Intel også lancere en ny version som eftersigende skulle afgive mindre varme, men sikkert også vil være noget langsommere.



In October of this year, Intel invited AnandTech to its Jones Farm Campus in Portland Oregon. The purpose of the visit was to get a detailed overview of their roadmap for the next year, and to take a close look at the Bensley platform. Bensley is the code name for Intel's new Xeon platform, which will support both Dempsey and Woodcrest processors and a new chipset, code-named Blackford. Demspey is going to take us well into Q2 of next year, and Woodcrest will appear sometime in the second half of next year. Woodcrest will be a lower wattage part that is focused on performance per Watt.

Dempsey is the processor that we're going to take a look at in this article. What we'll be showing benchmarks on is a pre-production Bensley platform. Performance may differ once the platform reaches production status. The key features of Dempsey are: dual-core support, 65nm fabrication and an Independent L2 2MB Cache (2x2MB). Intel will release three variations of the Dempsey processor: a 1066 MHz FSB (130W) version that is the "Performance" version, a 1066 MHz FSB (95W) version that is a rack-optimized part (perf/power for rack density) and a 667 MHz FSB (95W) value version.

The Blackford chipset is all new for Xeon, and addresses one of the main bottlenecks that we've seen in previous Xeon chipsets, front side-bus. Blackford uses a dual independent bus architecture operating at 1066MHz. Memory is now FBD-DDR2 (Fully Buffered DIMM) running at 533MHz, which offers up to 17GB/s of memory bandwidth.