Future Xeon Beckton?

[98707]

I know there are quite a few knowledgeable people here. I have read basic info that Beckton is an 8 core chip and supports quad socket configurations. Does anyone think we will see a 16 core Mac Pro next year? Thoughts?

 

[Tallest Skil]

No. Never. Beckton is too expensive.

Westmere will be out by next year, anyway. Gulftown is the next Mac Pro.

 

[Tesselator]

Hmmm, what socket does it use? Is it compatible with anything Apple has made so far?

 

[Tallest Skil]

Hmmm, what socket does it use? Is it compatible with anything Apple has made so far?

Beckton uses boards that take four CPUs.

1. The board can't fit in the current case, and Apple isn't changing the case.
2. It takes four CPUs. No one would pay for that.
3. The market is too small for Beckton to go in a mainstream computer.

 

[Tesselator]

Ah bummer. Just looked up the socket too and it's LGA 1567 so probably no chance of cheating either.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nehalem_(microarchitecture)#45_nm_processor_architecture


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This looks interesting. http://www.dailytech.com/Gulftown+is+the+Flagship+of+32nm+Westmere+Line/article14227.htm

It looks like the 6-core Gulftown might be a drop-in replacement. That would be cool!


.

 

[gugucom]

Beckton uses boards that take four CPUs.

1. The board can't fit in the current case, and Apple isn't changing the case.
2. It takes four CPUs. No one would pay for that.
3. The market is too small for Beckton to go in a mainstream computer.

Where did you get that info? It will run on LGA-1567 sockets and have 4 QPI instead of 2 that Nehalem Gainstown uses. I would think that four socket MoBos will be extremely unlikely. The current 2 sockets would give 16 cores (32 threads) within the 2 socket board architecture. That is plenty of power for any application you can imagine.

I agree with Tesselator though, that Gulftown will be more likely as Apple's next Mac Pro Generation. It retains the LGA-1366 socket, pushes two more cores, introduces 32 nm technology and on die MCM GPU. In the traditional two socket arrangement a 12 core, dual GPU machine would be interesting fodder for Snow Leopard without a huge burden of hardware re design. I doubt that Apple will be able to resist the temptation.

 

[Tesselator]

http://www.techpowerup.com/index.php?94743

Tuesday, May 19 2009

Intel to Detail 8-core Nehalem-EX Processor Next Week

Having successfully established the Nehalem architecture-derived Core i7 series as the industry's fastest consumer processors available, and recently propagating the architecture to two-socket Xeon series for servers and high-end workstations, Intel is set to push up parallelism two-fold with the Nehalem-EX 8-core enterprise processor. The company will detail this new line of chips next week, although a commercial-launch can be expected only in late 2009 or early 2010.

The new chip will succeed the company's own Xeon E7000 "Dunnington" series 6-core processors, for having the highest available parallelism per socket. The 8 physical x86-64 processing cores will further feature HyperThreading technology, sending the logical-processor count to 16 threads per socket. Each processor packs 2.3 billion transistors. The processor will further be designed for systems with more than two sockets per board. Currently although server-builders sell 1U and 2U servers with more than two Nehalem quad-core processors, the system is designed by using two (or more) two-socket mainboards interconnected using Infiniband. The announcement will be made on May 26, in an address headed by Boyd Davis, Intel's general manager of Server Platforms Marketing Group.

 

[Tallest Skil]

I doubt that Apple will be able to resist the temptation.

Having never used the 7xxx series, I think they'll do just fine resisting.

 

[Umbongo]

Where did you get that info? It will run on LGA-1567 sockets and have 4 QPI instead of 2 that Nehalem Gainstown uses. I would think that four socket MoBos will be extremely unlikely. The current 2 sockets would give 16 cores (32 threads) within the 2 socket board architecture. That is plenty of power for any application you can imagine.

It is for servers, not workstations. It is an MP processor which is aimed at a minimum of 4 sockets. While it is possible someone will make a 2 socket LGA 1567 board it doesn't seem likely. Unless you were refering to a Mac Pro having more than 2 sockets.

 

[gugucom]

No. Never. Beckton is too expensive.

Westmere will be out by next year, anyway. Gulftown is the next Mac Pro.

You seem to have changed your mind. In April you also thought that Gulftown would be the way they will go. So what is it now?

 

[iMacmatician]

http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer...tion-2010-superdesktops-nehalem-ex-nehalem-ep

Interesting. I don't think this will be likely for the Mac Pro though.

 

[Tallest Skil]

You seem to have changed your mind. In April you also thought that Gulftown would be the way they will go. So what is it now?

Gulftown... in 2010...

I fail to see what you're talking about.

 

[gugucom]

It is for servers, not workstations. It is an MP processor which is aimed at a minimum of 4 sockets. While it is possible someone will make a 2 socket LGA 1567 board it doesn't seem likely. Unless you were refering to a Mac Pro having more than 2 sockets.

I cannot imagine Apple going to a 4 x 130 W TDP design. Their experience is with 2 x 130 W maximum. This would bust the complete architecture of the Mac Pro. So the only sensible option would be a two socket Becton. It would be a very singular machine stuck with 45 nm technology.

So the alternative of Gulftown still appears to be much more probable to me. Much of that technology will carry over to Sandy Bridge and that will be the 1011-1012 road map.

 

[gugucom]

Gulftown... in 2010...

I fail to see what you're talking about.

So what did you mean in post # 8?

Having never used the 7xxx series, I think they'll do just fine resisting.

This was in answer to my post #6 saying that I expected Apple to use Gulftown.