Is Intel's Quad-Core "true"
-
Since last year, or so, Intel offers quad-core processors, but they are two dual-core on one chip. Intel will be releasing next gen. of the quad-core process code name Yorkfield (sometime in/after November) – some reports suggest that it will be true/native quad-core (4 cores on one chip) while others suggest that it will be same as it is now. AMD few days ago has also launched quad-core processor, Barcelona which is "true" quad-core. Anyone has some info to clarify as to “true” nature of Intel's Yorkfield?
Deviation from good code design leads to the dark side (aka kludgy code). Mike M MCAD.NET WinInsider.com - News for Microsoftonians
-
Since last year, or so, Intel offers quad-core processors, but they are two dual-core on one chip. Intel will be releasing next gen. of the quad-core process code name Yorkfield (sometime in/after November) – some reports suggest that it will be true/native quad-core (4 cores on one chip) while others suggest that it will be same as it is now. AMD few days ago has also launched quad-core processor, Barcelona which is "true" quad-core. Anyone has some info to clarify as to “true” nature of Intel's Yorkfield?
Deviation from good code design leads to the dark side (aka kludgy code). Mike M MCAD.NET WinInsider.com - News for Microsoftonians
Intel is planing to go "true" Quad core when they die shrink down to 45nm which will happen later this year but initial yields are not looking good so you probably will not see any large volume shipments of the 45nm chips until Q1 2008. The reason why they went with 2 dual cores is that with the transistor count and size of the cache at 65nm would make a single die so big that it would be too expensive to produce. Remember that Intel has significantly more cache than AMD to make up for intel using a slower memory subsystem.
Last modified: 10mins after originally posted --
John
-
Since last year, or so, Intel offers quad-core processors, but they are two dual-core on one chip. Intel will be releasing next gen. of the quad-core process code name Yorkfield (sometime in/after November) – some reports suggest that it will be true/native quad-core (4 cores on one chip) while others suggest that it will be same as it is now. AMD few days ago has also launched quad-core processor, Barcelona which is "true" quad-core. Anyone has some info to clarify as to “true” nature of Intel's Yorkfield?
Deviation from good code design leads to the dark side (aka kludgy code). Mike M MCAD.NET WinInsider.com - News for Microsoftonians
-
How is this anything but semantics, either way you have 4 separate processors...processing your data?
"I don't want more choice. I just want better things!" - Edina Monsoon
Data flow between the two dual cores is probably slower than it would be in a native quad-core setup?
-
Since last year, or so, Intel offers quad-core processors, but they are two dual-core on one chip. Intel will be releasing next gen. of the quad-core process code name Yorkfield (sometime in/after November) – some reports suggest that it will be true/native quad-core (4 cores on one chip) while others suggest that it will be same as it is now. AMD few days ago has also launched quad-core processor, Barcelona which is "true" quad-core. Anyone has some info to clarify as to “true” nature of Intel's Yorkfield?
Deviation from good code design leads to the dark side (aka kludgy code). Mike M MCAD.NET WinInsider.com - News for Microsoftonians
:-) Funny... AMD and Intel will create more and more powerfull processors and Microsoft will do more and more dumb software (such as Vista)... Will it ever stop?
------------------------------------------------------------ Want to be happy - do what you like!
-
Data flow between the two dual cores is probably slower than it would be in a native quad-core setup?
That is the main reason otherwise it is a cheaper to do it the other way as yields are better with 2 smaller cores versus a large core.
Last modified: 15mins after originally posted --
John
-
Since last year, or so, Intel offers quad-core processors, but they are two dual-core on one chip. Intel will be releasing next gen. of the quad-core process code name Yorkfield (sometime in/after November) – some reports suggest that it will be true/native quad-core (4 cores on one chip) while others suggest that it will be same as it is now. AMD few days ago has also launched quad-core processor, Barcelona which is "true" quad-core. Anyone has some info to clarify as to “true” nature of Intel's Yorkfield?
Deviation from good code design leads to the dark side (aka kludgy code). Mike M MCAD.NET WinInsider.com - News for Microsoftonians
-
How is this anything but semantics, either way you have 4 separate processors...processing your data?
"I don't want more choice. I just want better things!" - Edina Monsoon
It's more about structure of caches and the speed of buses between them. I believe in Intel's design, two cores share a single L2 cache (of 4MB I think in current Xeons but I think I've also seen 6MB). A 'Core 2 Quad'/Xeon 53xx basically just has two Core 2 Duo/Xeon 51xx chips wired together in the same package. The interconnections between the two chips are wired to the same Front Side Bus that goes off-package to the memory controller. When fetching data that isn't already in its own cache the core (pair) basically just broadcasts 'please give me the data at address XXX' and the other core might respond from its cache if present, but that blocks the second core from fetching from main memory. It's a larger problem with systems with multiple sockets connected to the same bus because traffic between cores on the same package ends up on the FSB rather than being completely private, and can therefore block memory requests from a different package. By contrast the AMD 'Barcelona's have an on-chip memory controller and all four cores share a single large cache. Theoretically this should lead to less inter-core blocking. A multi-socket AMD system is a Non-Uniform Memory Access system - each socket has different RAM sockets connected to it, and if you want data from memory that's connected to a different processor package, you have to ask the other package for that data (which may also respond from cache rather than main memory). Windows Server 2003 understands NUMA systems and will try to allocate memory for threads from the appropriate areas of physical memory. So, if the bottleneck in performance on your system was the bandwidth to main memory, the AMD solution would probably be better. On most systems, though, it's disk bandwidth. Further, in a lot of software, the locality of reference is commonly good enough to keep all the data that a thread is referencing in the caches, so the FSB isn't used as much as you might think (also the FSB is a bit faster than the actual memory buses now, so the FSB won't be saturated even if main memory is, I think). The terminology is getting very difficult for multi-core systems, especially where HyperThreading is also involved. 'Chip' isn't too good when you have multiple actual chips in the same package.
Stability. What an interesting concept. -- Chris Maunder