Nehalem: Intel gives the industry exactly what’s needed

Opinion – I have been very surprised reading the commentary from other websites regarding Core i7. Many of those authors believe Intel fell short with this Tock cycle, essentially stating they did not deliver a commensurate successor as with Core. I honestly have to ask the question, are those reviewers looking at the same chip I am? Do they not recognize what Intel has done with this iteration? I for one am most impressed with Intel’s design and goals. In fact, I believe Intel has delivered exactly what the industry’s needed – a high performing platform to steer the course between here and the next big thing.

There will come a point and time when the heterogeneous nature of processing will surpass x86’s abilities and attractiveness, and most likely by orders of magnitude. I honestly believe Intel realizes this today, but recognizes the industry can’t just jump from here to there in one go. It’s why their focus is on Larrabee and Terascale-like processors, and primarily on x86-design. These hold a single replicated core repeated time and time again for massively parallel computing, albeit with some specialized design considerations. But the truth being revealed by the industry and the many solution forms cropping up, seems to be that homogeneous specialized core designs won’t be our final destination.

Read more: tgdaily.com