Six-Core Intel Xeon 7400 Shipping September 15

When the going gets tough in the enterprise server sector you need big processing power. Larger and more complex database systems, scientific computation and web servers demand more and more power every other day.


More power usually ends up meaning more physical hardware taking up more space. This is something that Intel is working hard towards minimizing – increase the processing power and reducing the footprint.

The last of the Penryn class enterprise processors is on the way. Boasting a huge 16MB L3 cache. This is Intel’s first step beyond four cores. The new Xeon 7400 (Dunnington) will have six cores and be the first using the new monolithic design - multiple cores on a single die. The Xeon 7400 will be socket compatible with Xeon 7300 boards which will allow for simple upgrades with little downtime.

The Xeon 7300 series were high-wattage as well, some pushing 130 watts. The new 7400 series is targeting a much lower wattage, however no solid data has been available – upon its actual release we should start to see what kind of numbers are out there in real world application.

Previous 7300 series Xeon processors weighed in at four cores and a hefty 8 MB cache and a very large price tag that ranges between $2,200 to $2,600. As no solid pricing information has been released regarding the new 7400 series, one could expect the 7400 come in little more than current 7300 pricing while 7300 series take a price slash. It would be logical to expect pricing around $2,600 to $2,800.

Enterprise processor markets have never had consistent pricing like the consumer processor market, so finding the right deal can be a lot of work for smaller businesses that wish to save a few bucks. Larger entities tend to worry more about what it can do for them as opposed to the sticker price.

Since this will be the last of this server era from Intel, it may not see much daylight as large entities are already planning their road map towards Nehalem, especially due to the architecture’s scalability. On a side note - if rumors continue to hold true, we should be seeing the Core i7 (Nehalem) line rolling out by the end of this year.

Source:Toms Hardwre

gigabyte's 6 teraflops

San Jose (CA) - Believe it or not, NVISION 08 is not just about Nvidia. Earlier today we met with Gigabyte to see what we can expect from the Taiwanese manufacturer - and got a glimpse at an upcoming motherboard for Intel’s Core i7 processors with Nehalem core. The board, called Extreme Edition, sets several highlights, including the ability to transform your PC in a true deskside supercomputer that offers the processing horsepower of thousands of processors ten years ago.


The prototype board on display was based on Intel’s X58 chipset and supports up to six graphics cards, four PCIe Gen2 x16 slots and two wide-open Gen 2 x4 slots. Due to space constraints there is only Crossfire and no SLI support. So, what can you do with six graphics cards - for example six Radeon 4850 or six Nvidia 9800 GT models?

You could run up to 12 monitors, which should be a dream for any flight simulator enthusiast. While you can run up to four cards in Crossfire (graphics) mode, you can employ all six cards for GPGPU applications and floating point acceleration. The theoretical performance potential of such an environment would be in the 6 TFlops neighborhood for single-precision applications (double precision will cause the performance to drop by 80 to 90 percent.) To put this performance into perspective, consider the fact that Intel’s 1997 Pentium Pro supercomputer with 10,000 CPUs was rated at 1 TFlops.

The actual performance advantage of supercomputers is not entirely based on pure processing horsepower, but also memory capacity, which GPUs cannot match. But the simple thought that you can add six graphics cards with 4,800 processors for about $1,200 to rival the performance of supercomputers that cost billions of dollars a decade ago (at least in some applications) is stunning.

On the power side, Gigabyte’s engineers developed a separated 12-phase power supply for the CPU; a 2-Phase structure is in place for the memory and a separate 2-Phase regulation for the PCI Express slots. The company indicated that there will be room for overclocking and special attention was paid to ensure "workstation-class stability under any conditions."

The board can support up to 24 GB DDR3-1333, or 6 GB of DDR3-1900/2000 memory (using overclocked 2 GB DIMMs). Thanks to the 2-Phase regulation, there should be enough juice to hold future 4 GB DDR3-1333 modules.

The board is still being worked on and the prototype will undergo significant modifications in the storage and cooling department, we were told. The combined air/water-cooling block will be modified so that the six graphics cards can fit. All six SATA ports will be rotated to support extend-length PCIe cards.

new ipod nano?????

is it the new ipod nano?????

the pics all over the net.....


source:engadget

SATA 3.0 comes to life.....

Chicago (IL) - SATA 3.0 has made its first appearance at IDF, as peripherals are slowly but surely approaching the limits of SATA or SATA-II. The latest SSDs are hitting data transfer rates of 250 MB/s, close the theoretical maximum of 300 MB/s of SATA-II.

Visitors at this year’s Fall IDF were able to see the initial SATA 3.0 specification, which will expand the bandwidth of the interface standard from 3 Gbits/sec. (300 MB/sec.) to 6 Gbits/sec. (600 MB/sec.). It is interesting to note that the SATA 3.0 spec equals the bandwidth offered by the original SAS (Serial Attached SCSI) specification. By doubling the speed from 2.0 and 3.0, the standards body is hoping that the bandwidth of SATA 3.0 spec will be sufficient for the next couple of years.

We are not so sure. Given the speed increase of SSDs over the past 12 months, we would suspect that 6 Gb/s could last for 12 months, especially if we consider the fact that SATA 3.0 devices are in development already. And companies such as Fusion-IO offer products hitting 2GB/s speeds, which means that even 600 MB/s is not enough.


source:tomshardware

Intel G45 Motherboard to have 4 display support...

The number of monitors supported by one system is typically limited by the number of graphics card outputs, which is a nice for Nvidia and ATI, as it enables both companies to sell their low-end GPUs as more expensive Quadro NVS and FirePro models with four display interfaces. The other alternative, of course, is DisplayLink, a company that specializes in transmitting visual data through a USB link. So far, DisplayLink support was only provided to displays that included the firm’s DP-120/160 chips.

DisplayLink has decided to provide its technology through a license model and it appears that the first major customer is Intel.

According to DisplayLink, Intel’s 4 Series chipset for desktop and notebook displays will support four displays at the same time: Two displays are supported through conventional outputs, while two more displays can be connected via USB 2.0.

Source:tomshardware

My First post here....

Hey guys this is ma first post in the new blog.....of technology.......called Tech-know-city....