An evaluation of Intel’s core i7 architecture using a comparative approach

Abstract

A comparative study of Intel’s two server implementations, Nehalem and Harpertown, has been conducted. Since Nehalem is a new micro-architecture breaking Intel’s long tradition of a shared memory controller, because Nehalem implements the first instantiation of Intel’s QuickPath Interconnect, and because Nehalem contains a new implementation of hardware multi-threading, it is of great importance to understand the performance implications of these new innovations. A combination of micro-benchmarks and HPC application workload has been used in the evaluation. The findings indicate that Nehalem delivers a quantum leap in performance compared to its predecessor and that the new hardware multi-threading improves performance on HPC workloads.