This is a presentation about Intel Nehalm Micro-architecture and the reference of the slides is Intel white paper

1. Intel® QuickPath Architecture
Mohammad Radpour
Amirali Sharifian

2. Outline
• Introduction
• The Importance of the System Interconnect
• That’s Today, Let’s Look at What’s Next
• What Is Intel® QuickPath Architecture?
• Intel® QuickPath Interconnect Advantages
• Integrated Memory Controller Advantages
• Conclusion

3. Introduction
• Tick-Tock : Intel introduces a new microarchitecture or a new
process technology
• other ways to boost system infrastructure
• next generation microarchitectures – codenamed Nehalem and
Tukwila
1. integrates a memory controller into each microprocessor
2. Connects processors and other components with a new high-speed
interconnect
• delivering the additional performance, bandwidth, and
reliability required to support Intel’s next generation

4. TheImportanceof the SystemInterconnect
• microprocessor and its microarchitecture provide the
processing power
• microprocessors execute instructions faster -> potential
bottleneck
• performance of a system is the speed at which a
microprocessor and its execution cores can access system
memory
• In multiprocessor system multi-processor communication
required to ensure memory coherency

5. Traditional solution
• using an external bi-directional data bus called a front-side bus
(FSB)
• perform as a backbone between the processor cores and a
chipsets
• increased FSB performance:
• increasing the frequency (speed)
• Adding multiple FSBs per system
• large memory caches in its processors

6. What Is Intel® QuickPath Architecture?
• high-speed connections between microprocessors and
external memory and I/O
• implementation of scalable shared memory ( one of the bigest
changes ! )
• Intel QuickPath Interconnect is that it is point-to-point
• Nehalem-based platforms will simply be the first to bring both
scalable shared memory and integrated memory controllers
together
• local memory will always be the fastest