Intel to turn broken eight-cores into six-core CPUs

Posted on Tuesday, February 10 2009 @ 21:43 CET by Thomas De Maesschalck
ARS Technica writes Intel detailed its upcoming eight-core, 16-thread Xeon processor at an ISSCC session. One of the interesting snippets was Intel's cache and core recovery scheme, which will let the company salvage a usable part from a defective chip by disabling the defective regions.
So for instance, if testing and validation finds a defect in a cache slice on a chip, then Intel can disable that slice and sell the chip with lower cache. And likewise with cores, so that you might buy a six-core chip from Intel that was originally produced as an 8-core Xeon but had two defective cores.

The company claims that it can effectively isolate the nonfunctioning cache and cores, so that these extra parts don't increase the chip's power draw by letting through leakage current.
The funny thing is that not so long ago, Intel bashed AMD for selling quad-cores with one defective core as triple-core processors.


About the Author

Thomas De Maesschalck

Thomas has been messing with computer since early childhood and firmly believes the Internet is the best thing since sliced bread. Enjoys playing with new tech, is fascinated by science, and passionate about financial markets. When not behind a computer, he can be found with running shoes on or lifting heavy weights in the weight room.



Loading Comments