The Real Conroe Successor: Clarkdale & All You Need to Know about Westmere
by Anand Lal Shimpi on September 24, 2009 6:00 PM EST- Posted in
- CPUs
Intel spent a lot of time talking about Nehalem a year ago, but not much time on Westmere. It's the tick to Nehalem's tock, or in other words, it's 32nm Nehalem.
Unlike previous die shrinks, we don't get larger caches with Westmere - Nehalem was already too big to begin with. Westmere keeps the same architecture, same cache sizes (or ratios) as Nehalem. It's all built using smaller 32nm transistors and on a smaller die. For the same core count, expect Westmere to be roughly half the size.
But the same core counts aren't what you're going to get. I included the table below in yesterday's Core i7 920XM preview:
| Codename | Market | Cores | Manufacturing Process |
| Bloomfield | Desktop | 4 | 45nm |
| Lynnfield | Desktop | 4 | 45nm |
| Clarkdale | Desktop | 2 | 32nm |
| Clarksfield | Mobile | 4 | 45nm |
| Arrandale | Mobile | 2 | 32nm |
The Westmere products are Gulftown, Clarkdale and Arrandale. That's six, two and two cores. Lynnfield is the last quad-core on the roadmap for the foreseeable future.
We'll talk about Gulftown later, but the focus today is Clarkdale with a little Arrandale.
Meet the 'dales
Arrandale and Clarkdale are the first two Westmere family members you'll meet. Both are technically due out later this year, although we won't see large volumes (by Intel standards) until Q1 2010. Both Arrandale and Clarkdale are dual-core Westmere parts with on-package graphics. The only difference is that Arrandale is mobile while Clarkdale is desktop.
Arrandale running - Hyper Threading helps improve performance even in normal workloads
The desktop socket is LGA-1156, the same socket as Lynnfield. The mobile socket is mPGA-989, the same socket as Clarksfield.
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MonkeyPaw - Friday, September 25, 2009 - link
Yeah, every new iteration of Intel graphics is always promised to be fully functional and competitive. Yet every time, they aren't. Their IGPs ship with stuff disabled or not supported by drivers. 3D is a joke thanks to what has to be a one-man driver team. 2D usually works great, but that was mastered that almost a decade ago. I really don't have high expectations of Larribee. From what I gather, it will require a 6 pin and an 8 pin power connector, and all Intel can do is show it raytracing QuakeWars. Raytracing is great, but developers are not going to abandon rasterization as long as game consoles use it!Camikazi - Saturday, September 26, 2009 - link
Intel BoxStation i3720, featuring Larrabee raytracing and i3 CPU, coming soon! That would take care of rasterization :PBen90 - Thursday, September 24, 2009 - link
Yea its fairly annoying; especially in the forums when people arnt the most educated that there is a difference...I would love to be the person at intel responsible for creating their tick/tock drawings, must be the easiest, most secure job in the world...
Intel: Drawing boy! we need another tick tock picture now!
Drawing boy: Howbout we put some overlapping semi-circles
Intel:Perfect! That will work for another 2 weeks
Griswold - Friday, September 25, 2009 - link
What happened to the original tick-tock drawing boy? The one way back in 2006 who made that penis shaped tick-tock pattern - was he fired?kiwik - Wednesday, November 11, 2009 - link
You mean these tick-tock drawings?http://tweakers.net/ext/i/1190631924.png">http://tweakers.net/ext/i/1190631924.png
VooDooAddict - Saturday, September 26, 2009 - link
He went to work for Disney.MadMan007 - Friday, September 25, 2009 - link
Pat Gaysinger decided to go to a different company.the zorro - Friday, September 25, 2009 - link
these days the tic-toc seems more like a tic tac.AnnonymousCoward - Friday, September 25, 2009 - link
hilariousmdbusa - Thursday, September 24, 2009 - link
the clarkdale processor includes nehelem and westmere features--that really clears things up for me.
The problem is that when we go to buy a pc all we see is a processor name--i7 , i5, blah blah