[Info-vax] Comparison between Nehalem-EX and Power7

[John Wallace]

On Sep 9, 4:28 am, Neil Rieck <n.ri... at sympatico.ca> wrote:
> On Sep 8, 4:21 am, JF Mezei <jfmezei.spam... at vaxination.ca> wrote:
>
> >http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/review/1532674/power7-vs-nehalem-ex
>
> > Interesting article about upcoming chips. IA64 not mentioned. VMS mentioned.
>
> > I mention this because with the 8086 now coming to 8 cores at 64 bits,
> > along with power7, one wonders if Tukwila (IA64's upcoming chip) will
> > make any dent at all.
>
> > With the 8086 evolving at high pace, the IA64 delays will likely result
> > in new IA64s coming out at a time when they will already be surpassed by
> > the 8086. If Tukwilla's performance is not spectacularly superior to
> > Nehalem-EX, it would appear that the market will send a strong message
> > for HO-Intel to abandon IA64.
>
> On a related note, check out the diagrams in the associated article:
>
> http://arstechnica.com/hardware/news/2009/09/intel-launches-all-new-p...
>
> Yikes! Nehalem without a Quick Path Interconnect. And the memory
> controller is right on the same die as the CPU. I haven't seen
> innovation like this since Alpha EV7. Alphacide was in 2002 so it only
> took Intel 7 years to finally get where Alpha was. Ah, if only Carley
> and Curley hadn't been seduced by the shadows (sorry, I'm re-watching
> 5 years of Babylon 5)
>
> Neil Rieck
> Kitchener/Waterloo/Cambridge,
> Ontario, Canada.http://www3.sympatico.ca/n.rieck/OpenVMS.html

That does look interesting doesn't it; it even looks applicable to
something I might need at work, where a high speed PCIe datalogging
card might be of value, especially if the PCIe interface is low
latency and low contention (for data going *to*, not from, main
memory).

Meanwhile, on a related note, what's the maximum physical memory on
these boxes these days? Is it different between Itanium boxes and
x86-64 boxes, and are the differences architectural (inherent in the
chip, maybe) or just related to the number of memory slots on a
motherboard?