Intel's next generation chips may require firms to upgrade their architecture

Software vendors may need to update their applications to optimise them for forthcoming Next Generation Micro-Architecture (NGM) processors from Intel.

Most software will get some benefit from the new chips' improved clock speed and pipeline changes without requiring such optimisation. "[But] this is our next-generation architecture and we're working with software vendors to optimise their products to it," said Werner Schueler, Intel server and storage platform manager.

Schueler was speaking exclusively to IT Week as part of Intel's campaign to promote its roadmap for power-efficient processors built using multiple cores. Schueler highlighted Intel's forthcoming quad-core chip, codenamed Clovertown and due in the summer of 2007. Clovertown will be one of several desktop and server chips using NGM. The first server NGM chip will be a dual-core device codenamed Woodcrest.

Schueler said several versions of Clovertown will be offered, including a version that consumes 80W and is designed for low-power-consumption kit such as blades.

Schueler added that the 80W figure was based on the fact that Clovertown would comprise two Woodcrest dual-core chips, each with 40W power consumption.

However, software vendors will probably need to update their products if they want to optimise them for the forthcoming NGM chips. Schueler said that Intel is already working with vendors such as Microsoft and Oracle to optimise their software to work with the forthcoming hardware. For example, some of the new NGM chips will have an L2 cache size of 4MB compared with the 2MB L2 cache in most of today's systems.

Certain types of software could gain performance benefits if they were tuned to work within the available cache size.