Mainstream appeal is attractive as it brings in the bulk of the revenue, but a halo product does much for a company's image, especially with enthusiasts.
Whipping out the client roadmap for 2009 and 2010, we see that Intel plans on releasing a high-end desktop chip known as Gulftown.
We
saw a fully-working Gulftown system at this year's IDF. For those that
need a little reminder, Gulftown is a 32nm-based chip that uses the
Westmere architecture. The smaller, more-power-efficient process
enables Intel to increase the core count from a four execution units to
six whilst remaining within the 130W TDP. The hexa-core Gulftown is
otherwise identical to present quad-core Bloomfield (Core i7 9xx),
although Intel is rather coy in explaining the chip's supporting cache
arrangement. Our bet is on 12MB of shard L3.
Intel's representatives stated that a BIOS update is all that is needed to ensure Gulftown operation on current LGA1366-based X58 chipsets.
The six-core, 12-threaded CPU will do core-to-core battle against AMD's also-six-core Thuban chip, to be released in 2010. Perhaps more relevant to the workstation market, we're keen to see who buys Gulftown, 'cause it ain't going to be cheap. Would you buy a six-core chip? We'd love to hear your thoughts in the HEXUS.community.
Intel's representatives stated that a BIOS update is all that is needed to ensure Gulftown operation on current LGA1366-based X58 chipsets.
The six-core, 12-threaded CPU will do core-to-core battle against AMD's also-six-core Thuban chip, to be released in 2010. Perhaps more relevant to the workstation market, we're keen to see who buys Gulftown, 'cause it ain't going to be cheap. Would you buy a six-core chip? We'd love to hear your thoughts in the HEXUS.community.
