A leaked Intel desktop roadmap for 2010 reveals the rumoured ‘Core i9’ six-core superslab to be a ‘Black Label’ Extreme Edition of the Core i7 set for launch by March 2010.
While Intel has a slew of mainstream desktop and notebook chips on the launchpad for next week’s Consumer Electronics Show, details have leaked on rumoured six-core processor which will slot in at the high end a little further down the track.
Codenamed ‘Gulftown’ and mistakenly tagged by many enthusiasts as the first chip in a purported Core i9 line, the six-core superslab turns out to be the ‘black label’ Extreme Edition Core i7-980X (showing that Intel has wisely decided to stick with the three-tier ‘good, better, best’ scenario of the Core i3, Core i5 and Core i7).
Built as a 32nm Westmere-class processor, the i7-980X sports six cores and thus twelve simultaneous processing threads, backed by 12MB of Level 3 cache and with a nominal speed of 3.33GHz
A sneaky slice of Intel’s 2010 desktop roadmap reveals the i7-980X is due sometime in the first quarter of next year, when it will replace the current 45nm ‘Bloomfield’ i7-975 Extreme Edition – which is also rated at 3.33GHz but has only four cores and 8MB of L3 cache.
Using Intel’s Turbo Boost mode the i7-975 can ratchet up to 3.45GHz across all four cores and redlines at 3.6GHz with just one core operational, so the i7-980X should at the very least match those numbers.
The question is – engineered on the more efficient 32nm process and packing two extra cores, how much headroom with the i7-980X have? Is it enough to bring Intel within spitting distance of 4GHz?