Intel Gulftown: Vorab-Test der 6-Kern-CPU "Core i9" in 32-nm-Westmere-Architektur

Currently basic approach of the CPU manufacturers to performance problems is the same everywhere: More cores - with subliminal hope that applications and games will utilize them. In 2010 Gulftown - also referred to as Core i9-XXX - will be released. Nobody knows the exact date and probably Intel hasn't even set one yet. At least it's settled that the processor will have six cores and is based on the Westmere design, which succeeds the Nehalem architecture that has been introduced only a few months ago.

Gulftown Engineering Sample at PC Games Hardware
Gulftown is a processor Intel develops for the upper market sector. The final specifications most likely have not been decided on yet. But nevertheless the first samples have been produced and were sent to hardware manufacturers who need new processors as early as possible to develop the appropriate infrastructure. BIOS developers, motherboard engineers or cooler producers: they all need reliable performance and energy values of a chip - the earlier, the better.

And right there it gets troubling for Intel. The risk that information or even whole test samples find a way into the hands of third parties may not be underestimated. But if the processors don't reach the developers early enough, the company would risk a failed product launch because the infrastructure is not fully developed or not available at all.

Thus it happens from time to time that a test samples leave official channels and are traded on the grey market months before the actual product launch. Every now and then such devices reach the editorial office of a magazine or website - like ours. Such a test, which actually isn't really one since the product will never hit the retail market in this configuration, is a two bladed sword of course: On the one hand we want to inform you, our readers, as early as possible and give usable tips for your next shopping expedition. But on the other hand the results we get are only partially significant and could give a wrong impression of the new generation - since neither motherboards, BIOS versions nor drivers have been optimized appropriately yet. Nevertheless we finally decided to test the Gulftown prototype, but please note that the performance results should be handled with the necessary care.

Core i9: The Westmere architecture of Intel's Gulftown
Like all Westmere processors the Gulftown is produced in a 32 nanometer process. While some Westmeres like Clarkdale have an additional integrated 45 nanometer graphics unit, Gulftown remains a purebred 32 nm chip. Intel doesn't plan an integrated graphics unit for this model.

Strictly speaking Westmere processors still belong to the Nehalem family at least according to Intel's latest exposure. But for better clarity we differentiate between Nehalem and Westmere.

According to Intel's Tick-Tock model the Nehalem successor is primarily a smaller production process. The basic chip design only gets some cosmetic changes. What this means has been hinted at by Intel in an official presentation: Seven new command sets, which are supposed to accelerate encryption of data, are implemented. With this it is said to be possible to encrypt whole hard drives with a small performance loss only.

Besides that the architecture features of the Uncore section remain untouched: Like the current Nehalem upper class with Bloomfield core the Gulftown utilizes three memory channels as well as a QPI link to other processors and the chipset. According to new information Gulftown officially will support DDR3-1600 only - but this can change until the final release. The processor is running with 133 MHZ reference clock speed.

Core i9: Intel Gulftown with more transistors
Due to the smaller chip structure there is more space for additional transistors. A current Nehalem quad-core chip has about 730 million while it is estimated that Westmere models will have up to 2 billion transistors. Intel uses the advantage for two additional cores and a lot more L3 cache.

So Gulftown chips have six physical cores and (if Hyperthreading is active) twelve logical cores. The L3 cache is 12 MiByte big (Bloomfield: 8 MiByte). L1 and L2 cache are not changed and are set to 64 KiByte per core (L1) respectively 256 KiByte (L2).

Core i9: The Gulftown chip
The sample we have access to carries the CPU ID 6C0, which hints at a B0 Stepping. But we can't confirm this since the required register in the COU apparently hasn't been set yet. The relevant values at the positions 12 and 13 in the EAX Register don't allow a reliable conclusion.

The default clock speed of our chip is 2.4 GHz with a multiplier of 18 and the reference clock speed of 133 MHz. Like current processors the chip is able to reduce the multiplier to 12 in idle mode which results in a frequency of 1,600 MHz. the final processors will be able to reach much higher clock speeds and currently frequencies similar to those of the Bloomfield models are expected. This would mean default clock speeds of up to 3.33 GHz and even 3.6 GHz in turbo Mode.

Unfortunately the multiplier of our engineering sample was locked. Therefore we ran most benchmarks with the default clock speeds of 2.4 GHz.

Core i9: The infrastructure of the Gulftown
According to yet unconfirmed plans Intel won't establish a new infrastructure for the Gulftown processors. In other words: With a BIOS update current motherboards with X58 chipset will be able to support the new processors. Since the power consumption is, regardless of the higher number of transistors, supposed not to exceed 130 watt, it is unlikely that new voltage regulation modules and thus new boards are necessary. But of course this cannot be confirmed until Intel releases the final processors.