Intel Six Core Processors

Intel announced that it will officially release six-core processor during the second half of this year. The chip maker also plans to start final production of its Nehalem chips in the fourth quarter of this year.

The Intel six core processor comes with 1.9 billion transistors, 16MB of Level 3 cache, the six-core chip, code-named Dunnington and will be built with Intel's new 45 nanometer technology.

"The big cache and six cores will give customers a nice bump in performance," Pat Gelsinger, a senior vice president and general manager of Intel's Digital Enterprise Group said.

Intel also announced today that it plans to start producing 32nm chips in either 2009 or 2010. Gelsinger said the first 32nm chip is slated to be a shrunken version of Nehalem, an upcoming four-core chip. The 32nm chips are code named Westmere.

The chip maker also plans to immediately start final production of its Nehalem chips in the fourth quarter of this year. The 45nm Nehalem chips will include an integrated memory controller, eliminating the need for a front-side bus. Gelsinger explained that the new Nehalem architecture is modular, which means Intel should be able to build a chip using different building blocks that should be able to scale from two to eight cores.

The Nehalem chip is also being designed to have been two-way, simultaneous multithreading, to use Intel's QuickPath interconnect, and to have a three-level cache hierarchy.

Gelsinger said more information on the Nehalem specs and the Dunnington will be disclosed at the IDF.