Intel to Roll Out Six Core Chip by September 15

As Intel Corp. (INTC) continues to innovate its series of microprocessors, the co’s primary focus remains persistently towards increased processing capabilities while achieving footprint reduction.

Intel is expected to roll out Sept. 15 its Xeon 7400 series Dunnington microprocessor, the first Intel Architecture processor with six cores based on the 45nm high-k process technology. It will be the first processor using the new monolithic multiple cores design (Nehalem will too) on a single die the size of a postage stamp.

Dunnington will include 16MB of L3 cache shared by all six processors to help boost performance. Each pair of cores can also access 3MB of local L2 cache. The design resembles that of the AMD Barcelona quad-core processor, four cores on a single die and designed for optimum multi-threaded application performance – however, the difference consists in the fact of each Barcelona core containing 512KB L2 cache, whereas Dunnington has large shared caches.

The six-core Xeon 7400 processor will be available from Intl. Business Mach (IBM), Unisys (UIS), Sun Microsystems (JAVA), Hewlett-Packard (HP), and Dell (DELL) starting mid September.