QPI ports in i7 5960X?

E-flat

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Jan 6, 2015
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From what I consulted, QPI is for communication between CPUs.
A Xeon E5 v3 has two QPI ports (totally 88 contacts if i am right)
The corresponding contacts can also be found in X99 and Core i7 5960X.

Does QPI have other functions in Core i7 and X99?
Or these contacts are actually empty (not linked)?
 


I was actually responding to the OP, but you are mistaken. Look at the link I provided. Intel full well knows that of the list of processors that could benefit from QPI, only some of the Xeons are multi-processor capable. Hence QPI is beneficial in other uses for non-MP Xeons as well.

bG4fVpM.png


 
Intel may well be using the same link standard for single CPUs to communicate with off-chip resources, but that would be a redundant consideration as that link must exist on ALL CPUs in some form or another. AMD uses the same bus standard to communicate from the chipset to the CPU, and from CPU to CPU on many platforms. Intel probably does too....

By my interpretation, E-flat is asking about a feature (something that could be enabled or disabled), not a fundamental requirement (something obviously enabled on ALL CPUs).