Intel will reveal details about its upcoming eight-core Xeon Processor based on Nehalem microarchitecture at International Solid-State Circuits Conference (ISSCC) in San Francisco on Feb 9th. The information about Intel’s plan to preview the new chip was revealed in ISSCC’s Advance Program guide.
The 8-core Xeon processor will be able to process 16 threads and will be manufactured using 45nm process technology. It will have 2.3 billion transistors and bandwidth of 6.4GT/s.
According to Intel, the new processor features enhanced Core microarchitecture, 3-level caches and 2-way SMT is implemented in 45nm high-k metal gate CMOS. The processor family has a coherent point-to-point link and integrates memory controller, power-management microcontroller and power-gate transistors and scales from sub-10 to 130W in mobile, desktop and server applications.
No other information is available, but it is highly likely that we will see the new processor in market by Q3 2009.
In another Intel related news, the company is planning to lower its mobile Core 2 Duo prices in second quarter of 2009. The 2.8GHz T9600 will see a 40 percent price drop from $517 to $309, while the 2.53GHz T8700 will see a 17 percent drop from $236 to $197. Other processers in mobile Core 2 Duo lineup will also see similar price drops. It is believed that Intel will be reducing the prices of its Core 2 Duo processor to make room for upcoming mobile processor update.