According to the chaps at the
Eclipse
Developer's Journal, Intel is planning a six-core microprocessor, which will
go by the Dunnington moniker. The six-core beast will be succeeded by the even
meatier, Nehalem micro-architecture, which will support greater than eight
cores. The work regarding the Dunnington project is still under wraps, but the
chaps at EDJ insist Intel has already put together a die, the size of a postage
stamp, with three dual-core 45nm Penryn chips on it sharing a 16MB L3 cache.
Dunnington doesn't require the record two billion transistors that it takes to
make Intel's next-generation 65nm quad-core Tukwila Itanium, but it's reportedly
close. Dunnington will appear in a variety of SKUs and a variety of clock rates
with power dissipation that ranges beyond 120W. Allegedly, we'll see the
Dunnington in either Q2 or Q3, this year - I'll be sure to keep you posted on
any developments!