Slashdot Mirror
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.""
FP FP Written Written from from my my new new dual dual core core chip chip from from Intel Intel. Still Still some some bugs bugs to to work work out out.
This seems to be the new trend,
AMD will have dual core opterons next year:
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.
It's a glitch in The Matrix. They happen alot.
No sig for you!!
C) Neither. More likely that Nvidia will move to the straight CPU market and compete along side of AMD and Intel. They understand though right now the market is bad for that, and instead make great chipsets for AMD (while being the underdogs, they're also a very good ally to have if they actually do attempt to shift into desktop processors).
ATi on the other hand, while they also make chipsets for Intel and AMD, they are much more concentrated on the Video market, and they really always have been (best 2d quality, bar none since a long time ago).
Intel on the other hand, is starting to shift gears to a more mobile computing based company. They know the future of computers is in having them everywhere we go. Now that computers are finally cheap enough to be everywhere, the next step is to have them WITH us everywhere we go. Intel's been focused on Mobile computing for a long time (StrongARM processors, and the -M series of all the pentiums, including the Pentium M itself). Their switch to having Pentium M on the desktop was really a have-to case, as AMD is really starting to encroach on their midrange server and high end desktop markets. They're simply not stupid enough to continue to sell a chip that nobody wanted in the first place. The Pentium 4 was nothing more than a time saver and a way to develop and test technologies that they would need in the future for their server markets. (Hyperthreading was existant on the OLDEST Pentium 4 hardware, though not enabled since it was still very primative). And as you've noticed, lots of the Pentium 4 technologies have already been ported over into other product lines.
AMD is more and more concentrated on taking the server room from Intel. Once they've done this, they'll trickle home just the same way as Intel processors did in ages ago. And they're willing to sacrifice it all on their gamble that the industry won't shift off of x86 simply because it's too deeply embedded. They're not willing to bet on Microsoft and other software giants NOT creating software for a different platform (since Microsoft is really the end-all, be-all for the software), and instead, they embraced this lockin and extended it. The OS doesn't have to be natively compiled and optimized for their platform, and that gives them a huge advantage over the Itanium iron that they were aiming for. When performance really failed to hit the spec of highly optimized Itanium 2 code, they simply shifted gears and aimed it at Xeon instead. This was smarter because they know if they can get businesses to optimize and recompile, Xeon hardware will have to be left behind.
IBM on the other hand, says "fuck everyone else, we're doing it our own way". Working with Apple they developed a platform and got it some market share quickly. Next step: get it more market share by pushing Linux (which is outside of the control of the corporate giant of Microsoft, although this is being challenged by SCO, who was evidently paid off by Microsoft to launch such attacks and alligations). Not that Linux is any faster than anything written in Windows, but that it's cheaper, open, endlessly flexible and faster to update than anything Microsoft can throw at it. This is a safe bet. They're also aiming for the Itanium giant, and have nailed it pretty well with the Virginia Tech terascale project. Many say this is a win for Apple, when really, it's a win for PPC, which is IBM's baby.
Microsoft is really the key card right now. If they port Windows to PPC, it could royally screw both Intel, and AMD out of business. Luckily, Microsoft would take a lot of flac for doing this because of the companies that are so entrenched in X86 optimized code, that moving over to PPC would cost them millions, and they could simply move to x86 Linux instead of the next version of Windows.
So really, CPU's are becoming a lot like CPU's, but the industry doesn't care, and is in a very intersting position with Microsoft at the head. What I'd love to see is nVidia release a chip on a
"Victory means exit strategy, and it's important for the President to explain to us what the exit strategy is." G.W.Bush
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.
No. I bet "recently-announced Longhorn specs" were a very clever troll, and I can't believe how many people HBT. All CPU & RAM requirements asside, but why would an OS *require* Gigabit ethernet and wireless networking? This guy confirms it, but hey, he works for Microsoft, so he must be lying.
No, it has everything to do with Pentium M and AMD64 architectures kicking PIV's a$$.
teja vu.
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"
Simply: cost. The CPU core is probably now well under 10% of the silicon area, the remainder being L1 cache and similar support circuitry. Adding a whole extra core adds very little to the total silicon - less than making the core more complex to handle ever deepening pipelines. Whereas adding a second complete chip, in its own package, plus the arbitration logic necessary to make the two chips work together, costs a lot more.
Consciousness is an illusion caused by an excess of self consciousness.
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.
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.
Consciousness is an illusion caused by an excess of self consciousness.