This is 24 cores in 1 motherboard. AMD Opteron has already multiple cores more than 2 years ago but upto 2 processors on 1 board only and upto 8 cores only. This is actually new. Intel has no offerings like this. This is a four socketed processor motherboard. 4x6 core processor = 24 cores.

http://www.fudzilla.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1...

Check out Istanbul demo videos here: http://links.amd.com/IstanbulUpgrade & http://links.amd.com/IstanbulDemo

See images of the demos here: http://links.amd.com/Images

Here is an IBM server featuring up to 96 xeon cores:
http://www.qassociates.co.uk/pdf/IBM-x3950M2-datasheet.pdf

Here is the link to the 6 core Xeon:
http://www.intel.com/pressroom/archive/releases/20080915comp.htm

Can anyone contrast these to what AMD is cooking up?

I had a thought about this from listening to the Podcast:

Wouldn't having 3 servers with 4 cores each be a bad idea in this case? Because at least one of those servers would have their cores spread across multiple CPU's, which could play havock on the cache/memory side of things. I'd think that sharing a chip with 2 for 3 each, and then the most demanding having 6 of the other chip would work better in many cases. I guess I don't really have a feel for how much logic is built-into the chips for cache and memory association.

AMD is about 2 years behind Intel with this product. By the time AMD releases it, they will be almost 3 years behind.

Istanbul was Constantinople
Now it's Istanbul, not Constantinople
Been a long time gone, Constantinople
Now it's a Turkish delight on a moonlit night.

The fact that it's a drop-in replacement for dual-core Socket F platforms should get this thing at least SOME sort of audience. That is, if it's really a drop-in replacement for all server boards and not some half-assed "maybe" upgrade like the Phenom, which could go in some AM2 boards and not others.

I get really annoyed when the socket is the same but the CPU upgrade path isn't there. Just like LGA 775 Pentium Ds on Intel 925 boards couldn't be upgraded to LGA 775 Core 2 CPUs.

24 cores in task manager?
How about 64 cores in task manager?
8-core nehalem-EX, quad socket, with HT is going to be exactly that.

Did you really mean 6MB L2?

I'd love to see in depth benchmarks for intel and AMD's high end server stuff.
Anandtech used to cover some of this but not all of it.

Shame we don't have any games which scale better with more cores yet.

Intel is making an 8 core/16 threads Xeon with 24MB L3 cache

So, Intel will still hold the performance crown.

Everyone seems to be missing the other shoe here. Istanbul will also be a drop in replacement in existing 8-socket Barcelona and Shanghai systems, as well as support the new HT3 star topology with 1-hop 8-bit wide HT paths between all of the cores. But let's stick with existing 8-socket systems from Sun and HP among others. The new topology will require new hardware designs, but Istanbul will be a drop-in for existing designs, whether done as an upgrade, or done by the OEMs as new options for existing hardware.

The HT assist should result in these 48 core systems scaling pretty well. At that level, the real competition is IBM Power, SPARC, and possibly Itanium 2.

I can't wait for the 128-core to come out

This will be great for servers, not much use for the rest of us

It'd be interesting to see how Istanbul fared against last September's six-core Dunnington Xeon 74xx processors in a four-socket configuration, with a 24-core box on either side.

Moar corez!!!11
O_o

Is that a Fiorano demo also? If HT3 is really active.

This is pleasant news indeed. I've been waiting for news on this but didn't expect it to come out this early . It looks like AMD is may have a decent chance of surviving next year!