Look Through Fast Process

The big news at the tail end of last year was the launch of Intel’s brand new Core i7 chip. Codenamed Nehalem, the Quad Core chip features a brand new architecture, which represents one, if not the biggest architctural shifts in Intel processors for ten years.

Core i7 systems are shipping now from the specialist systems builders such as and Scan, and we should start to see Core i7-based workstations from the likes of HP, Dell, Fujitsu Siemens and Lenovo in the next month or so.

So what is all the fuss about? There are three major architectural changes to

Core i7 that not only look good on paper, but should have a real impact on the way users work with CAD/CAM/CAE and rendering aplications, so let’s have a look at each of these in turn.

FASTER MEMORY

At the heart of this new architecture is a change in the way the chip accesses memory. Instead of the CPU communicating with the memory via the Front Side Bus, Core i7 can receive data directly from the system RAM. If this sounds familiar, that’s because it is, as AMD pioneered this integrated controller strategy with its Athlon & Operon processors a few years back.

With Intel’s Front Side Bus architecture, which is used on the Core 2 Duo and many generations before, there was a lot more latency when accessing memory. Now with Core i7, applications that access a lot of memory, frequently, will see a benefit. This is why AMD’s Opteron has remained a popular choice with certain CAE users, despite it being slowr in most mainstream applications.

The other change in the memory architecture is that the new memry controller has three channels to the RM which means that Core i7 systems will work best when memory modules are in mutiples of three, as opposed to two. This means we are likely to see workstaions with 3GB, 6GB and 12GB memory instead of the usual 2GB, 4GB, and 8GB.