Intel formally introduced its Core i7 CPU in the Dogpatch area of San Francisco today. The firm has introduced three versions today but Nehalem will gradually fill Intel's CPU roadmap. This family of processor uses 45 nanometre technology.

Pat Gelsinger (below), who presented the chips,  said there were 731 million transistors in Nehalem. “It’s the beginning of a family of processors,” Gelsinger said, with the Nehalem family filling out next year with expandable four socket plus processors called the Nehalem EX. The company will introduce an eight core system and eventually the Westmere, a 32 nanometre chip based on Nehalem before the end of 2009.

Gelsinger said the that the Core i7 re-introduced hyper threading technology plus Turbo Boost technology which has power management functions using power gate transistors which switch off the different cores of the Nehalem when they're not in use.

With future versions of Nehalem for notebooks and the like, Intel will increase the abilities of thermal management. Gelsinger said the Intel X58 Express chipset with Quick Path Interconnect and three channels of DDR3 will also give “meaningful” new capabilities in terms of audio.         

“The Core i7 has shattered all benchmarks,”  he said and 'smashes all benchmarks on floating point.' People have overclocked the Core i7 to over 5GHz, he added.

Intel’s job now is to create a vacuum for software to take advantage of the chip. X