Gulftown or Westmere-EP is the codename of an up to six-core hyperthreaded Intel processor able to run up to 12 threads in parallel. It is based on Westmere microarchitecture, the

32 nm The 32 nm node is the step following the 45 nm process in CMOS (MOSFET) semiconductor device fabrication. "32-nanometre" refers to the average half-pitch (i.e., half the distance between identical features) of a memory cell (computing), memory cel ...

shrink of Nehalem. Originally rumored to be called the Intel Core i9, it is sold as an

Intel Core i7 The following is a list of Intel Core i7 brand microprocessors. Introduced in 2008, the Core i7 line of microprocessors are intended to be used by high-end users. Desktop processors Nehalem microarchitecture (1st generation) "Bloomfield" ...

. The first release was the Core i7 980X in the first quarter of 2010, along with its server counterpart, the Xeon 3600 and the dual-socket Xeon 5600 (Westmere-EP) series using identical chips.

Processor

First figures indicate that at equivalent clock rates, depending on the software, it has up to 50% higher performance than the identically clocked quad-core Bloomfield Core i7-975. Despite having 50% more transistors, the CPU strongly benefits from the 32-nm process, drawing the same or even less power (depending on the operating system) than its Bloomfield predecessors with merely four cores. The

thermal design power The thermal design power (TDP), sometimes called thermal design point, is the maximum amount of heat generated by a computer chip or component (often a CPU, GPU or system on a chip) that the cooling system in a computer is designed to dissipate ...

(TDP) of all planned models is stated to be 130

watt The watt (symbol: W) is the unit of power or radiant flux in the International System of Units (SI), equal to 1 joule per second or 1 kg⋅m2⋅s−3. It is used to quantify the rate of energy transfer. The watt is named after James Wa ...

s. Westmere-EP is the first six-core dual-socket processor from Intel, following the quad-core Bloomfield and Gainestown (also known as Nehalem-EP) processors using the same

LGA 1366 LGA 1366 (land grid array 1366), also known as Socket B, is an Intel CPU socket. This socket supersedes Intel's LGA 775 (Socket T) in the high-end and performance desktop segments. It also replaces the server-oriented LGA 771 (Socket J) in the e ...

package, while the earlier

Dunnington Dunnington is a village and civil parish in the City of York and ceremonial county of North Yorkshire, England. The population of the civil parish was 3,230 at the 2011 Census. The village is approximately east from York city centre. The vi ...

six-core processor is a

Socket 604 Socket 604 is a 604-pin microprocessor socket designed to interface an Intel's Xeon processor to the rest of the computer. It provides both an electrical interface as well as physical support. This socket is designed to support a heatsink. Launch ...

based multi-socket processor. The

CPUID In the x86 architecture, the CPUID instruction (identified by a CPUID opcode) is a processor supplementary instruction (its name derived from CPU IDentification) allowing software to discover details of the processor. It was introduced by Intel ...

extended model number is 44 (2Ch) and two product codes are used, 80613 for the UP desktop/server models and 80614 for the Xeon 5600-series DP server models. In some models, only four of the six cores are enabled. Since 2014, Xeon 3600 and 5600 series Westmere-EP processors became somewhat sought-after as an upgrade route for older X58 motherboards. In some cases, motherboard BIOS revisions have allowed the installation of these six core processors onto boards originally targeted for two or four core processors. In fully threaded workloads, total system performance will increase by a value equal to the number of cores added (i.e. moving from a four core 2.6 GHz to a six core 2.6 GHz system would deliver 50% more multithreaded performance). With proper BIOS support and the correct supporting components, many users have reported substantial overclocking potential, often as high as 4.4 GHz while staying within Intel's maximum allowed voltages (no higher than 1.35v for the core or the uncore)Intel Ark Entry for X5650
https://ark.intel.com/content/www/us/en/ark/products/47922/intel-xeon-processor-x5650-12m-cache-2-66-ghz-6-40-gt-s-intel-qpi.html Retrieved 2020-05-23.

Overview

References

{{Intel processors, nehalem Intel products

Processor

Overview

See also

References