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Intel Planning 6-Core "Dunnington" Microprocessor

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brfitzp1337

Limp Gawd
Joined
Oct 18, 2007
Messages
267
"According to the chaps at the Eclipse Developer's Journal (EDJ), Intel is planning a six-core microprocessor, which will go by the Dunnington moniker.

The six-core beast will be succeeded by the even meatier, Nehalem micro-architecture, which will support greater than eight cores. The work regarding the Dunnington project is still under wraps, but our friends at EDJ insist Intel has already put together a die, the size of a postage stamp, with three dual-core 45nm Penryn chips on it sharing a 16MB L3 cache. Allegedly, we'll see the Dunnington in either Q2 or Q3, this year—we'll be sure to keep you posted on any developments."

Via Gizmodo

Anyone heard of this? Sounds great to me.
 
Hmm... I dunno. That close to Nehalem they'll have a hard time getting the high end market to shell out two months before a new architecture and socket.
 
If it's LGA775 server or desktop doesn't really matter... though getting a BIOS update for desktop boards to support another 2 cores when they're only available on server chips could be a dealbreaker.
 
brfitzp1337 said:
Via Engadget

Anyone heard of this? Sounds great to me.
Click to expand...
Thanks for posting about Dunnington. I am extremely interested in this processor. Yes, I heard about it a while back, but haven't acquired any more information until you posted this link. I am very surprised and pleased its based on Penryn. I had the strange impression it was a Nehalem variant for some reason. So, this begs the question as to which socket(s) and chipsets will be compatible? S-775? S-771?? Very curious to know.

There is an Intel chart with block diagrams displaying current and forthcoming core architectures here: http://forums.vr-zone.com/showthread.php?t=196356

^ Click on top chart for a bigger pic. I really hope Dunnington turns out to be within the realm of affordability (and current socket supported) because I sure know that Beckton (Nehalem EX) won't be.
 
pxc said:
If the TDPs are accurate, it's not going to be LGA775. It's a high(er) end server CPU anyways and it will be priced like one. :p
Click to expand...
If so, I'm hoping it will be compatible with some of the currently available S-771 boards with nothing so much as a BIOS flash. I have three such boards and even if only one can support this processor, I'll be a happy camper.
 
pxc said:
From the source article. I read it.
Click to expand...

Clicked, clicked, clicked, finally found. They're claiming multi-processor compatibility, so it's likely S771 anyway. Guess the 6 people that buy Skulltrail can swap out for 12 cores eventually.
 
APOLLO said:
If so, I'm hoping it will be compatible with some of the currently available S-771 boards with nothing so much as a BIOS flash. I have three such boards and even if only one can support this processor, I'll be a happy camper.
Click to expand...

Alot of it will depend on the boards VRM. The 5000x board in my Precision 690 won't support the 53xx series even though the chipset will. I'd imagine the 5400 and 5100 series boards should since they support 45nm chips, but it will be wait and see.
 
I see how this helps the server market, but why they are producing a stop gap chip between todays 4 core tigertown chips and next years 4-8 core (both believed to be monolithic die) Nehalem, and how does 16MB L3 fit into this if it is supposedly three 45nm Penryn dice. I thought L3 still had to be built into the die.

Will these chips communicate with eachother by use of the FSB or this L3 cache?, If by the FSB, how, its overloaded as it is on 4s xeon MBs with 4x FSBs. If by L3, then how do they work that out with the current micro architecture.

Edit Looking at that 1 VR-zone.com diagram, it says the chips are linked by L3 cache and its a monolitic die comprised of 3 penryn dice. My question is how they get it to work with the L3, and why this is only going to be a server product, and they can't produce a monolithic QC for LGA775 hooked together by L3 and not the traditionally slower FSB. Also why intel would design this chip if its only for the short term (3-6 months) unless nehalem is somehow delayed.
 
silent-circuit said:
Clicked, clicked, clicked, finally found. They're claiming multi-processor compatibility, so it's likely S771 anyway. Guess the 6 people that buy Skulltrail can swap out for 12 cores eventually.
Click to expand...

I think more people will buy the D5400XS than you think. I doubt many will opt for the QX9775 processors though.
 
As to why they would design it, look at Dempsey, it was only out for a month or two before Woodcrest.
 
ND40oz said:
Alot of it will depend on the boards VRM. The 5000x board in my Precision 690 won't support the 53xx series even though the chipset will. I'd imagine the 5400 and 5100 series boards should since they support 45nm chips, but it will be wait and see.
Click to expand...
Well, all of my boards are 53xx processor compatible since that's what they're currently running, but even so, would that in and of itself confirm or increase likelihood of compatibility?

Dan_D said:
I think more people will buy the D5400XS than you think. I doubt many will opt for the QX9775 processors though.
Click to expand...
If the D5400XS will support Dunnington, let me tell you it will be worth every penny. It would be so much more compelling as a platform. I will strongly consider it for my main system build later this year if I can only receive confirmation from Intel.
 
APOLLO said:
Well, all of my boards are 53xx processor compatible since that's what they're currently running, but even so, would that in and of itself confirm or increase likelihood of compatibility?

If the D5400XS will support Dunnington, let me tell you it will be worth every penny. It would be so much more compelling as a platform. I will strongly consider it for my main system build later this year if I can only receive confirmation from Intel.
Click to expand...

53xx is 65nm, the 54xx series processors are 45nm. The new Seaburg chipset boards (5400) are the ones that all have 45nm support, so you'd be more likely to have support for Dunnington with a Seaburg chipset board then you would with a Greencreek (5000X) or blackford (5000P) chipset board.

I really wish intel wouldn't have made their board chipset numbers with the same sequence as the actual processor designations...
 
Dan_D said:
I think more people will buy the D5400XS than you think. I doubt many will opt for the QX9775 processors though.
Click to expand...
If you're not going to QX9775, why not just get a Tyan or Supermicro workstation board? You can even do SLI on some. Since skulltrail isn't the massive overclocker mobo it was made out to be, I guess my n00b brain just doesn't grok the upside.

Anyway, 16MB of on-die cache sounds like a spiff way to keep my single-core apps away from pipeline stalls. I guess the other 5 cores are nice insurance against accidental presses of the windows key or errant IMs while gaming. I hope this is a 775 footprint, because DDR2 is so cheap and the boards are so clockable - eventually Intel will release something that looks like a good upgrade from a Q6600 ;)
 
Why 6 cores? To rub it AMD's face. And for those companies who want more powerful CPU's but don't want to shell out the $$$-$$$$ for Nehalem.
 
huddy said:
Why 6 cores? To rub it AMD's face. And for those companies who want more powerful CPU's but don't want to shell out the $$$-$$$$ for Nehalem.
Click to expand...
Probably part of the reason. Since Intel is capable of doing it, why not? Nehalem certainly won't be cheap when it's released. This could be a boon for those purchasing servers now and want some longevity in the their systems. It's not a bad idea.
 
Simpson5774 said:
Also why intel would design this chip if its only for the short term (3-6 months) unless nehalem is somehow delayed.
Click to expand...

Simple. This chip *isn't* for the short term.

Dunnington is for MP. Intel's MP roadmap is always the last to transition to the new microarchitecture. Look at when Tulsa and Tigerton were released. It's going to be well into 2009 before Nehalem reaches MP territory. Hence the need for 6-core. By the time Nehalem arrives for MP, it'll bring 8-core with it.
 
JackPack said:
Simple. This chip *isn't* for the short term.

Dunnington is for MP. Intel's MP roadmap is always the last to transition to the new microarchitecture. Look at when Tulsa and Tigerton were released. It's going to be well into 2009 before Nehalem reaches MP territory. Hence the need for 6-core. By the time Nehalem arrives for MP, it'll bring 8-core with it.
Click to expand...
Agreed and would also add that DP systems stand to gain from Dunnington as well. An extra four cores definitely can't hurt.
 
Living Weapon said:
If you're not going to QX9775, why not just get a Tyan or Supermicro workstation board? You can even do SLI on some. Since skulltrail isn't the massive overclocker mobo it was made out to be, I guess my n00b brain just doesn't grok the upside.
Click to expand...

You can not do consumer SLI on any board other than the D5400XS. Also the D5400XS was never touted as a massive overclocker. The Skulltrail platform on the other hand is. The platform by Intel's definition includes the two QX9775 processors. Those are highly overclockable especially on water.
 
There are hacked nvidia drivers that support SLI on Intel chipsets. It's kind of pointless though because you're stuck at that driver version and there is no support for newer cards. It did work when I tried it using a pair of 6600GTs, the only pair of similar cards I have right now.
 
Dan_D said:
You can not do consumer SLI on any board other than the D5400XS. Also the D5400XS was never touted as a massive overclocker. The Skulltrail platform on the other hand is. The platform by Intel's definition includes the two QX9775 processors. Those are highly overclockable especially on water.
Click to expand...
That 400MHz still isn't considered by anyone as 'massively' overclockable.
 
pxc said:
There are hacked nvidia drivers that support SLI on Intel chipsets. It's kind of pointless though because you're stuck at that driver version and there is no support for newer cards. It did work when I tried it using a pair of 6600GTs, the only pair of similar cards I have right now.
Click to expand...

Again that doesn't help now does it? Nothing newer than the 7900GTX can be used with the hacked drivers. Also you are limited to Windows XP for those drivers as well.

Down8 said:
That 400MHz still isn't considered by anyone as 'massively' overclockable.
Click to expand...

400MHz FSB is the default of the board when running two QX9775 processors. Again the board isn't overclockable hardly at all but the processors are. They are good for an easy 4.0GHz with no voltage increases. They can most likely go higher with water cooling and a little bit more voltage. Granted that isn't the same as 4.5GHz like the Wolfdale CPUs can sometimes do, but for a quad core that's a pretty massive increase. You also have to consider that overclocking CPUs in pairs is a bit more difficult as you quickly become limited by the weakest processor.

It isn't the most overclockable setup out there, but it isn't bad either.
 
Dunnington is server only (although I can see marketing shoving one of those in LGA775 as an Extreme like they did with Gallatin). I highly doubt we'll see those mass produced... it'll be the end of architecture product like Tulsa was to Netburst.
 
dexvx said:
Dunnington is server only (although I can see marketing shoving one of those in LGA775 as an Extreme like they did with Gallatin). I highly doubt we'll see those mass produced... it'll be the end of architecture product like Tulsa was to Netburst.
Click to expand...

It is possible they'll work on the Intel D5400XS motherboard which is a dual LGA771 board thats' SLI compatible.
 
Dan_D said:
It is possible they'll work on the Intel D5400XS motherboard which is a dual LGA771 board thats' SLI compatible.
Click to expand...

Lol, it's called skulltrail.

I'm sorry, you either pick a single 775 board w/ SLI, dual socket 771 workstation/server board w/ not sure, or the skulltrail mobo. Guarantee you that intel won't make another version.
 
colinstu said:
Lol, it's called skulltrail.

I'm sorry, you either pick a single 775 board w/ SLI, dual socket 771 workstation/server board w/ not sure, or the skulltrail mobo.
Click to expand...

No it isn't. Skulltrail was the code-name of the platform. Intel defines the platform as the combination of their D5400XS motherboard and two QX9775 processors. This was clarified in an E-Mail we received from Intel directly. In this link you can see that D5400XS is indeed the correct model number of the motherboard: http://www.intel.com/products/motherboard/D5400XS/index.htm

http://hardocp.com/news.html?news=MzA3NzEsLCxoZW50aHVzaWFzdCwsLDE=

You can see from the announcment here that it isn't even called Skulltrail anymore. Code names like Skulltrail, Bonetrail, and Badaxe do not officially apply any longer once the products are released. Intel has always done things this way as far back as I can remember. People still choose to call some of their products by their code names but truthfully it is no longer appropriate. Just like Vista is no longer called Longhorn, even though it was during development.
 
Dan_D said:
I think more people will buy the D5400XS than you think. I doubt many will opt for the QX9775 processors though.
Click to expand...

12 cores plus fb-dimms reminds me of the P4-E all over again. Was talking to a friend the other day how its crazy that one can actually consider buying a kilowatt psu these days when not even 3-5 yrs ago a 400 watt psu could get the job done.

The computer industry has truly gone mad!
 
JVC said:
would current vista os work with a 6 core cpu?
Click to expand...
Even XP should work as long as there's no more than two physical processors on the motherboard. I don't know if MS will have to release any special patches for optimizing performance though, but I see this as a PnP upgrade.
 
DemonDiablo said:
12 cores plus fb-dimms reminds me of the P4-E all over again. Was talking to a friend the other day how its crazy that one can actually consider buying a kilowatt psu these days when not even 3-5 yrs ago a 400 watt psu could get the job done.

The computer industry has truly gone mad!
Click to expand...

Actually a truly decent 400 watt PSU could still get the job done 99% of the time. Only multi-GPU systems or systems with a ton of drives actually pull more power than that under load.
 
Whoa!! I'm gonna hold out for this onE!!! It'll be great for emails and messenger ;)
 
Personally I think even 8 cores is too much processioning power for gamers. These crazy nehalems with threads and cache and all... it's too different.

Time will give us benchmarks.
 
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