Intel unveils specs on Nehalem EX processor

The Nehalem EX fits up to eight cores on a single chip

Intel has revealed further details of its forthcoming Nehalem EX server chip aimed at systems with four or more sockets, which it claims will deliver significant performance gains for multi-processor systems.

Nehalem EX processors will feature up to eight cores with 24MB of shared cache memory, all on a single chip. Like the Xeon 5500 chips for twin-socket servers announced in March, Nehalem EX will be able to run two threads per core, making a total of 64 threads in a four-socket system.

Intel has not been specific on a launch date for Nehalem EX, other than that it expects production to begin in the second half of 2009.

However, the company is already making bold claims for the chip, promising the highest-ever performance increase over a previous-generation processor.

Nehalem EX will have up to nine times the memory bandwidth of last year's Xeon 7400 line, according to Intel, as well as double the memory capacity with up to 16 memory slots connected to each CPU socket.

Intel said that tests with online transaction processing workloads show the Nehalem EX delivering two and a half times the database performance of its predecessor.

The new processor line will also introduce some high-end reliability features previously seen in Intel's Itanium family, such as the machine check architecture to detect and correct errors. Intel said that both Itanium and Nehalem EX will offer customers an alternative to proprietary RISC-based systems.

Nehalem EX is primarily aimed at four-socket systems for demanding enterprise applications and server consolidation, but versions of the chip will target large-memory two-socket systems and larger eight-socket servers.

Each Nehalem EX chip will have four Quickpath interconnects, compared with the two seen on the Xeon 5500, also based on the Nehalem architecture.

A video interview with vnunet.com on the new processor can be found here.