intel quad core?

[atocp]

I was wondering if anyone has any insight into Intel creating an upgrade to their quad-core series of processors. When they created the Pentium D dual core using the FSB for communication, they were incredibly slow, but by creating the shared L2 cache for communication, they went around any latency problems. The quad core relies on FSB for communication between dies and therefore the speed increases are not as huge relative to what you would expect (an overclocked E6700 does almost as good in many tests).
Does anyone know of any roadmap, news, 'insider knowledge' of Intel creating a new communication route instead of the FSB which would speed up the latency issues with the new quad cores? Coz i really dont want to fork out several hundred pounds for a new quad core (which would last me a few years, to have a better version of the same model come out soon. im willing to wait even up to a year for the better version!

cheers for any help,
atocp

[jwlangs]

Re: intel quad core?

If you're willing to wait, Intel is supposed to release their Nehalem processor in the 2nd half of 2008 after Pynryn. This processor will have the memory controller on the die with the processor, similar to what AMD does with their processors. This helped the athlon 64 reduce latency, so it should help Nehalem as well. Do a search for Nehalem and you should be able to find alot more info and a roadmap.

[Yawgm0th]

Re: intel quad core?

Indeed, Nehalem is supposed to have an on-die controller.

That said, it's not worth waiting for. The on-die memory controller and hypertransport are not the only things the K8 line has going for it that made it beat out Netburst, and the FSB was not Netburst's real problem.

The entire line of P6-based processors -- from the Pentium 3 up to Core 2 Duo -- all use an FSB and all of them have performed incredibly well. Core 2 still does great with an FSB. Front-side bus is not such a problem that you should let it prevent you from going quad-core. The fact is, Core 2 Quad is great. It scales very well and has good clock speeds for being quad-core. I'd wait for the July 22nd price drops, and from then on Quad-Core is the way to go.