Intel Provides Additional Details about its Octo Core Xeon Nehalem EX

Intel started to unveil some details about its forthcoming Xeon EX processor which will feature 8 cores. they will sport 24 MB of shared cache, manage 16 threads and be composed of 2.3 billions transistors... A new chipset will allow management of 16 RAM modules per CPU, while being able to control up to 16 of such CPU simultaneously... a motherboards with 64 cores.
they will also include a technology originating from the Itanium, Machine Check Architecture (MCA). Under this acronym is defined a powerful error proofing system that will continuously check errors in process and memory cache in order to prevent any crash.
Both CPU and chipset are expected for the second half of the year. Of course, we do not know if Apple will use such high-end CPU in the Mac Pro, or will use them to launch a new hardware model which could be an ultimate working station. It might also depends how Snow Leopard can benefit from such raw power, as it will of course not be cheap components...