DMI vs DMI2

[Ozae]

I am looking at two processors, both have a bus speed of 5Gt/s but one has a DMI bus type while the other has a DMI2 bus type. What does this mean and how will it affect performance?

 

[Hjgrove]

A DMI is a link between the Northbridge and Southbridge of the motherboard.
DMI2 has a bus speed of 20Gbit per second where as DMI only has 5Gbit per second resulting in a faster transfer speed.

 

[Ozae]

Ok, so I have been looking at some processor comparisons. A link to the comparisons is below. Is the system bus the speed of the bus type or are they not related. Please take a look at the link I post to see what I'm referring to.

http://ark.intel.com/compare/75048,75043,75054,75123

 

[Hjgrove]

They are completely different.
The Bus type is what kind of bus they are using to connect different parts of the motherboard (Like connecting the memory controller and the I/O contoller hub) and the System bus is always the same on each type of CPU/motherboard (Like the front side bus)

For example in a car there always has to be a link between the engine and the ignition (Like the System bus)
But there isn't always a link between the heated seats and the console because the car may not have any (Like the Bus type)

Hope this helps!

 

[Ozae]

So what aspect of performance will the bus type affect?

 

[Pinhedd]

Ok, so I have been looking at some processor comparisons. A link to the comparisons is below. Is the system bus the speed of the bus type or are they not related. Please take a look at the link I post to see what I'm referring to.

http://ark.intel.com/compare/75048,75043,75054,75123

Those are all Haswell architecture microprocessors. The single one with "DMI" rather than "DMI2" is a typo. The last platform to support DMI rather than DMI 2.0 was the Intel 5 series platform with Nehalem/Westmere microprocessors.