In the Intel Developer Forum on Wednesday, the company unveiled its first desktop PC chips branded Intel Cor i7 processors and initial energy-efficient, high-performance server products (codenamed ‘Nehalem-EP') will be first to production. Intel is also planning to manufacture a second server derivative designed for the expandable sever market (Nehalem-EX), and desktop (Havendale and Lynnfield) and mobile (Auburndale and Clarksfield) client versions in the second half of 2009. Intel Chairman Craig Barrett said “technology is a tool to address some of the world's most pressing challenges related to health care, education, economic development and the environment,” said Barrett, who also chairs a United Nations initiative on technology in the developing world. “No nations or individuals are untouched by these issues. Get involved. Be part of the solution.” Barrett also announced that Intel will award four $100,000 prizes to the most innovative ideas for applying technology to meet unmet needs related to education, health care, economic development and the environment. Ideas will be evaluated for sustainability and innovativeness of the solution. The next-generation Core microarchitecture also features Intel Hyper-Threading Technology delivering up to 8-threaded performance capability on 4 cores in the initial versions and best-in-class memory bandwidth thanks to the new QuickPath Interconnect. The new Intel Xeon processor X7460 with 6 cores and 16MB L3 cache for expandable servers launching in September has already broken multiple performance world records1. An 8-socket IBM System x 3950 M2 server became the first platform to break the 1 million tpmC barrier on the TPC-C benchmark.
