Intel's Quick Path Interconnect Evolved

Intel's Quick Path Interconnect (QPI) was a massive step forward over the front-side bus that was used from 1995-2008. QPI finally caught up and exceeded AMD's HyperTransport, helping Intel retake much of the server market.

The next generation QPI 1.1 was re-architected based on trends and changes in the computer industry. QPI 1.1 is an incremental improvement at the physical and logical layer, but a substantial change in the cache coherency protocol. The net result is a faster and more power efficient interconnect that will scale better for large servers and is nearly identical for both Itanium and x86 microprocessors.

Sandy Bridge-EP will be the first product to implement QPI 1.1. Most of Intel's other server microprocessors, such as Ivy Bridge-EP, Ivy Bridge-EX and likely Poulson will follow suit in the coming years. Read more at RealWorldTech.