Two Clovertons are today's 8x4

WE WERE reminded that an eight-core system is available today. You don't need to wait for Q3 2007 to have one, as Intel can already do it today. If you want an AMD eight-core system then you need to wait until late next year.

We checked the claims and learned that our sources got things right. Intel has Quad-Core Xeon processor 5300 series codenamed Clovertown. These babies come as 1066/1333 FSB parts, with the faster one clocked at 2.66GHz and branded as X5355. This baby looks very similar to Kentsfield but it has 8MB of cache memory, 4MB per core, and the faster FSB. It has four cores and supports 64 bit and some other neat stuff.

You need an Intel server motherboard to support two of these babies but these chipsets can support 64 and some even 128GB of memory. Just to tell you that there is always an alternative. µ