INQ对于Nehalem市场影响的分析

itany

How to launch Nehalem when Penryn is doing so wellIntel's CPU transition troubles

By Nebojsa Novakovic: Monday, 07 July 2008, 4:11 PM






WE'RE A MONTH AWAY now from the upcoming Fall Intel Developer Forum in the cool windy Frisco, a place where you might see quite a few of us running around gathering the news. A very important event for us and for you.

Especially this year, where Intel is pretty much expected to unveil its final Nehalem rollout plans for the initial 4Q '08 rounds: read - DP workstation, HPC and UP gaming parts.
As we've mentioned here before, the Bloomfield UP and Gainestown DP Nehalems, both using varieties of the Tylersburg chipset platform, are doing well, and seem to have gained a bit of speed over the past few months too - at least enough to have their launch speeds matching the best GHz launch clocks of the Penryns at the same time, while hopefully providing quite a bit more performance.

At the same time, Penryns have managed to keep AMD at bay when it comes to speed, except in big MP boxen and HPC supercomputing apps, where Opteron's memory bandwidth and Hypertransport still give it an edge till... yeah, till the Nehalems are in.

So, Intel seems to be in a kind of dilemma: start pre-marketing the Nehalems early to extend the mindshare domination over AMD, but at a risk of cannibalising the current healthy Penryn sales; or 'balance out' the rollout, focusing strictly on the high-priced extreme segments first to gain platform recognition without affecting Penryn revenues?

Well, it's not all so clear. If, say, limited "extreme" Bloomfield and Gainestown benchmarks were to surface, with results drastically above the best Penryns, even many mainstream buyers could be impressed enough to consider delaying their upgrades till the mainstream Nehalems are out and about in a year from now. Those sales right now have very little risk of going to AMD, so delaying them is a pure revenue loss to Intel.

Keep in mind also that the QuickPath interconnect and on-chip memory objectively give the least advantage on uni socket desktop machines, where the existing FSB1600 is far from being saturated. Also, in a typical X48 or 790i chipset scenario, the Crossfire or SLI GPUs have fast direct access to very high bandwidth DDR3 memory banks without going through chipset->CPU hops like they have to do on the current AMDs - or future Nehalems.

Then, we have the E0 Penryn stepping coming in, sometime this month probably. Expect performance and power gains over C0 similar to what the famous G0 stepping did for the 65nm generation. Either way, E0 should enable Intel to launch at least 3.6 GHz parts at about the same declared TDP and voltages as the current 3.2 GHz ones. Whether they decide to go ahead with that, or stick with the 3.2 GHz but possibly lower TDP, depends to a great deal on the decided Nehalem launch speed.

I personally feel Intel would have no problems having 3.2 GHz UP and DP Nehalems at launch in 4Q, and, if they really push it, 3.6 GHz limited Extreme parts aren't impossible either at the same time - as far as I've seen in early tests. So, Nehalems should have the launch speeds identical to the top Penryn speeds at the time.

My feeling is: go full steam ahead with the new processors and make things clear at the IDF - the promise was made to have them out this year, and it better be kept, at least for the workstation, HPC and gaming markets which are always the best early adopters.

The sales overlap problem with Penryn, and any resulting Osbourne effect possibility, can easily be removed by placing the initial Nehalems in a price class above the best Penryns, at least until early next year. By that time, Nehalem should be ready for the mainstream.

Does it mean cheaper high-speed Penryns? I hope so. More pressure on AMD CPU lines? Yeah, definitely. More opportunity for AMD GPU lads to bundle pairs of 4870 X2 cards with eaigh-end Penryn and Nehalem sold? Obviously. And, in absence of Nvidian Nehalem SLI chipset, more "value sales" of Nforce cum GeForce SLI bundles on Penryns? Sure - look at the GTX280 pricing drop for an early taste of it. µ

itany

主要的结论：
1 在双插座上，Nehalem的优势明显，而在桌面上，优势相对削弱。这也是Intel首发Xeon DP和高端桌面的原因
2 Nehalem在INQ的测试中能较为容易的冲上3.6，表明之前关于Nehalem将要为了冲高频设计的传说是真的
3 Penryn受到Nehalem的影响会比较便宜，也是给主流消费者的福音
4 AMD的CPU将更加难过，不过GPU会收到很大的好处，Nehalem将拉动CF的大发展；同时NV又将吃瘪了……

wozzl

结论1不支持，INTEL一直就是先发高端再发布低端的。

itany

原帖由 1empress 于 2008-7-8 03:24 发表
coreMA的四发射吃不饱问题，在Nehalem上依然没有解决，别指望有翻天覆地的飞越

当初样品E6700也是轻易冲到4G，凭3.6G就说Nehalem为了冲高频设计没有根据

Nehalem时期的重点要转到SIMD即新的AVX指令上了，这对浮 ...

实际上Nehalem已经初步解决了四发射吃不饱的问题，那就是超线程；从现在的成绩来看，超线程的性能提升比较明显
当初E6700能冲到4G么？不能看了coolaler的干冰大炮的测试，就觉得能上到4G；最初E6700也就是3.2G的水平，G0的才比较容易上3.6G

别忘了现在Nehalem才B0。C1的Yorkfield也是不好超的，更何况是B0呢。没准等到E0的Nehalem出来，就不得了了……

elisha

原帖由 itany 于 2008-7-8 10:06 发表


实际上Nehalem已经初步解决了四发射吃不饱的问题，那就是超线程；从现在的成绩来看，超线程的性能提升比较明显
当初E6700能冲到4G么？不能看了coolaler的干冰大炮的测试，就觉得能上到4G；最初E6700也就是3.2G的 ...

扣肉刚出来的时候就有风冷4G的实力了，Coolaler做过测试了

librae

主要还是架构，然后是步进吧
还是比较期待的[w00t>

itany

原帖由 elisha 于 2008-7-8 11:57 发表

扣肉刚出来的时候就有风冷4G的实力了，Coolaler做过测试了

用B3的E6550的兄弟有几个能超上4G的，恐怕是寥寥无几

godlike

扣肉刚出来只有6600 6700

风冷3.9g 3.8g还是可以的，c某人玩极限上4G当然正常

6550那是什么火星科技:w00t):


06年7月底我就用上e6600了

frankincense

原帖由 godlike 于 2008-7-8 23:16 发表
扣肉刚出来只有6600 6700

风冷3.9g 3.8g还是可以的，c某人玩极限上4G当然正常

6550那是什么火星科技:w00t):


06年7月底我就用上e6600了

最早的一批扣肉是E6300/E6400/E6600/E6700/X6800
穷人玩阉割过的E6300，富人玩X6800，中产则是E6600
夹在中间的E6400和E6700少人问津
玩E6300的大多都是到3.5G止步，此时外频已经到500了