David Kanter (dkanter@realworldtech.com) on 3/17/10 wrote:
---------------------------
>I just finished the first of two articles on Westmere, the 32nm, 6-core shrink of
>Nehalem. This covers the improvements, including new instructions, minor microarchitectural
>tweaks and some basics on the products that are available:
>http://www.realworldtech.com/page.cfm?ArticleID=RWT031710140138
>
>The second piece will be a review that actually includes performance data. I'm
>still gathering the data, but this should be a nice short read.
>
>David
>

It is a very fast chip. For Diep if we look at performance numbers from 3.33Ghz clocked 980 part:

http://www.lostcircuits.com/mambo//index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=79&Itemid=1&limit=1&limitstart=17

1.85M nps it gets.

If we take the Nehalem i7-965 number and multiply by 1.5 for moving up from 4 to 6 cores, that's 1247903 * 1.5 = 1.87M nps.

Achieved is 1.85M nps.

Now there is some loss in scaling as it has less memory controller per thread seen, to given an example. Note at 6 cores the software still scales near lineair, so that's not a problem at all.

So a very impressive show from intel there.

Note 130 watt per chip is quite a lot and $1663 is a tad much, but considering it's roughly 250 mm^2 i assume intel creams off market with this chip and can easily lower its price when needed.