Pete,
Because Xeon 5570 won't be out long enough to be trusted. It takes 1 year to validate a new platform. Guess what? Core i7 is a new platform. The current Opteron server platform has been out for 2+ years. That is that TTM that is in Opteron's favor for the next year after multi-socket core i7 comes out. By making Shanghai Opteron a drop-in replacement, OEM server makers don't have to go through the year long IT validation requirement, its just an upgrade on an existing platform.
We don't know when Intel started the validation, and as far as Opteron, how many years is it since HT 3.x was approved and HT 3.x capable chips released? 2+ years? Then, HT 3.0 Opteron platform should have been here 1+ years ago...
With Core i7, its a new CPU, new platform, new socket, new BIOS, new memory and new chipset. Thus it has to go through the hard year long IT testing in the customer's environment to make sure it works with all existing software and hardware. Any unresolved hiccups and it could be blacklisted. Doing twice the performance means less than nothing, if one calculation is wrong or any data is corrupted.
Anything can happen. Original Opteron was released with a long list of issues, and so was Barcelona. Is there anything that makes you think that Nehalem is in a worse shape? Or are you just guessing.
It is the major reason why the original Opteron became such a success, it required no changes to the existing software to work, even though it was a new CPU, BIOS, platform and chipset. It still went through the one year IT validation testing, but had a lot of new pilot projects using 64 bit apps trying it out. That those were successful helped boost its acceptance.
Again, we don't know when the validation started, and if it is indeed a year to validate the platform. So we have nothing to go by. The only thing we have is Intel's expected release time frame. Something tells me that there will not be 1 year delay from Intel release of Nehalem server CPU and release day of servers from Tier 1. Tier 1 server vendors may even have systems available for sale on the release date of the CPU.
Joe |
