Intel Drops Tejas, Xeon To Focus On Dual-Core Chips

PunkerTFC writes "Reuters has an article about Intel dropping the fourth-generation P4 chip (codenamed "Tejas") and the Xeon server processor. Intel says they want to concentrate on their new 'dual-core' technology for desktop and notebook systems. This is essentially putting two processors on one chip, allowing for a doubling of performance with less energy use. The introduction of this technology was not expected for another year and a half. Rival chip maker AMD says they have the capability to produce dual-core chips and will introduce the technology when they "feel there is a market need.""

Comments

Dual core opterons

[Mdalek]

This seems to be the new trend,
AMD will have dual core opterons next year:

Re:dual-core

[SiMac]

Hyperthreading and dual core are very different things. A dual core processor is basically two processors put onto one die. There are twice the number of execution engines, just like two separate cores, but on the same chip. This means it's easier and cheaper to make and install than two separate processors, and it has approximately equal performance.

Hyperthreading takes one physical processor and makes it appear to be two logical processors. There's still only one core and one execution engine. It appears to be two processors, but a 3.2GHz Pentium with HT will have nowhere near the performance of 2 3.2GHz Pentiums without HT.

Sun, IBM, other major vendors also going dual-core

[brg]

The UltraSPARC IV processor is also essentially two UltraSPARC III processors on a chip, integrated using chip multithreading (CMT) technology. Here is an article and some marketing blurbs about the UltraSPARC IV.

The current IBM POWER4 and upcoming POWER5 chips are both dual-core chips. Here is a nice presentation(PDF format) about the POWER5; you can see in the die photos where there are two cores. There have also been rumors of a dual-core PowerPC based on it, but nothing concrete yet.

Broadcom (which bought SiByte) markets a dual-core, 1GHz 64-bit MIPS chip called the BCM1250 which has a lot of integrated networking goodies.

Finally, it bears pointing out that on the other side of Intel's severed corpus callosum, they're also working on a dual-core chip.

Re:Remember

[mikis]

I mostly agree, only AMD already announced their dual-core CPU strategy even before Intel. In words of Mr. Ruiz:

"One of the most powerful things next year is going to be our dual-core product. To me, that's going to really shock the hell out of everyone, because it's going to be hardware-compatible, infrastructure-compatible, pin-compatible. I mean, people that have a 2-P system can slap in a dual-core product and end up with a 4-P system for the price of a 2-P. That's been the biggest drawback, everyone tells me. What keeps them from going from a 2-P to a 4-P system? It's price"

Re:Interesting

[mikis]

Um, AMD announced this in September last year.

"With coherent HyperTransport, it is inevitable that we will have multiple cores on a single chip. This is a tremendous opportunity because with our architecture the scaling is far superior to anything else that's out there., The Register quoted Mr. Sanders."

Also, see this: AMD CEO: "Dual-Core Opteron Will Shock the Hell Out of Everyone". Ruiz confirms dual core Opteron in 2005.

They say that Intel Tulsa (dual core Xeon) will arrive in about a year and Jonah (dual core Pentium M) is planned for 2005/2006.

So, nothing new here for AMD.

Re:Interesting.

[AlecC]

Sooner or later you are going to bottleneck on the memory interface. Dual cpus are going to give more capability than hyperthreading, at more cost. If they are strangled by the memory interface, there is no advantage to it. But if it gets more throughout - and Intel have probably simulated it to death - it could be the way to go.