Dual-CPU Nehalem on the way

Intel's Gainestown platform is looking beefy!

A month from now, Intel will officially introduce the dual processor Nehalem-EP, aka Gainestown.

Essentially, it keeps the same format and LGA1366 socket as the uni-processor Core i7, just dual CPU support and two QPI links per chip this time - one to talk to the Tylersburg chipset, another for high speed whispering to its twin Nehalem brother.

Even the workstation flavour of the Tylersburg is identical to the desktop one (X58) plus of course an extra QPI link to talk to that second CPU - or the second Tylersburg in dual North Bridge configuration for, say, quad PCIe x16 monster boards. Just count the PCIe lanes on the diagram.

What's so interesting about this machine is not so much the CPU core itself - everyone knows all about the Nehalem microarchitecture now and the core itself is more of an incremental improvement over Core 2 - but probably the most balanced core vs uncore system platform design of any DP machine we can recall.

The 25.6GB/s bidirectional bandwidth on each QPI link is twice the fastest FSB1600 bandwidth previously. And then you add up to 32 GB/s memory bandwidth per processor if simply sticking to the three-channel standard DDR3-1333 on each CPU. Should take care of both workstation and server tasks well, whether cache or memory-dependent. And then we add that scalable I/O bandwidth of one or two Tylersburgs...

Well, we all remember the Skulltrail - it may have been far more successful if the chipset was not limited by expensive, hot, high latency FB-DIMMs not exactly suited for desktop or even workstation apps, where latency is just important as bandwidth.

In this case, nothing stops the Gainestown, with a memory controller like the Core i7, to support non-ECC high-speed desktop DIMMs on an extreme mobo. And, there will always be applications, desktop, workstation and HPC-alike, that can make good use of the extra bandwidth, not to mention CPU speed uplift possibility.

So, let's hope that we will see some aggressive dual Nehalem boards following the goals of Intel Skulltrail and Asus Z7S WS from the previous generation, but pulling out the stops on an already pretty impressive and scalable platform.