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AMD Going Dual-Core In 2005
gr8_phk writes "We recently learned of Intel's
plans to go dual-core in late 2005. Well it seems AMD has
decided to follow suit. It should be noted that the K8 architecture has had this designed in
from the start. Will this be socket 939 or should I try to hold out another year to buy?"
...the G5, you'll be much happier.
Slashdot Eds Link Anonymous Posts With Logged Posts
They Are Vermin Feeding On Each Other's Feces.
I Hate \.
Zeikfried - Reuters, Nigeria.
In a hushed press conference held at the GNAA compound in blackest Nigeria, the cream of the journalistic crop from IGN, Gamespot, Gamespy and various other overpriced ad-infested shitholes gathered from across 4 continents to witness what has been described as the most shocking announcement of the post-E3 market. The purchase of a controlling stock in industry leading publisher Electronic Arts by the increasingly aggressive venture capitalists of the GNAA.
After keeping the illiterate troglodytes waiting for several hours, leading GNAA members Timecop, Penisbird and goat-see, along with Electronic Arts president and CEO John Riccitiello, pulled up in the specially commissioned GNAA Limo, now fully armoured to protect from the ever present threat of terrorism from zionist #politics oppers. All four were, as usual, stark naked due to the searing Nigerian heat, and were instantly greeted by a cacophony of flashbulbs and excited chatter from the wretched sodomites and college dropouts that populate the world of gaming, including a shower from the furiously masturbating IGN editor Matt Cassamassina.
"This is a new day for Electronic Arts" exploded the now fully erect Riccitiello, "and a new day for the Gay Nigger Association of America. Now no longer will the significant Gay Nigger minority be ignored by the racist cartels and Japanese Xenophobes that hold a tight noose on the gaming industry."
Shortly afterwards, following a brutal anal violation by nordic Gay Nigger DiKKy, the now broken and bleeding John Riccitiello was replaced by the newly appointed head of the GNAAs gaming division, Zeikfried Tuvai.
"This change is no mere financial step, or a changing of the guard, this will be an absolute fucking revolution. Work on our titles has already begun, I shit you not."
Tragically the conference was then cut short by a failed assassination attempt on the GNAA leadership by efnet #politcs opper and known fascist paedophile "Pickle", who was quickly disarmed by GNAA security and silenced by a large black phallus. However a press release has been issued to Reuters and the Associated Press, and is as follows:
Shitflood Gaia (GC/PS2/Xbox) Q4 2004 - A management sim, where the otaku scum of internet have gathered into a single drinking hole for quick extermination. The player must control his assets wisely to gain the maximum number of bites from the unsuspecting and unintelligent regulars in order to max out his LastMeasure meter and gain access to his most potent weapon, floodphpbb.
Americas Army - Operation #politics (PC (Windows Only)) Q4 2004 - GNAA/EA and the armed forces of the United States of America unite to bring the reality of the T.W.A.T to your Windows box this Christmas. This third-person shooter throws you in charge of the GNAA efnet black ops, as you struggle against corrupt IRC operators, Mossad agents, Nick Berg's head and eventually FreeTrade himself in an explosive struggle in the name of freedom and democracy.
Penisbird's Cock Perch Panic (GBA) Q1 2005 - A coup by OSDN shock troops threatens to overthrow the President, defeat the unwashed scum by guiding Penisbird onto their prone member, disarming them once and for all. As you move through the levels you must dodge traps laid by the increasingly desperate CmdrTaco, including CowboyNeal himself. Can you avoid his sentient rolls of lard to perch on CowboyNeal's notoriously miniscule penis? Find out for yourself in 2005!
About EA:
Electronic Arts (EA) is the world's leading independent developer and publisher of interactive entertainment software for personal computers and advanced entertainment systems such as the PlayStation®2 Computer Entertainment System, the PlayStation®, Xbox(TM) video game console from Microsoft, the Nintendo GameCube(TM) and the Game Boy® Advance. Since its inception, EA has garnered more than 700 awards
If more is better, why not proliferate cores like crazy?
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
linky linky!
As in a month old.
Dual cores are awesome for phones because it relieves the OEM from having to license a second radio chip to handle the radio. It also makes the phone smaller, so that asian girls can handle the phones with their small hands.
I don't see the benefit of sticking a radio in the CPU of a PC. Expansion slots are cheaper and more reliable than second-core radios. Better to go with something that can be easily swapped out in the case of failure than having to replace the entire CPU.
you can find them all here. It seems news has gotten around, and that AMD's dual core will consume just about as much power as a single core CPU at 90nm.
ignorance is bliss. googlefiberatx.com
Is this the end of moores law, at least in the form of CPU speeds doubling every 18 months? :)
There are essentially two CPUs, I doubt each of them will get 2x faster the next 1.5 years
actually it'll probably be more like the processors gets so big that you just clip things onto the outside of it and it takes the place of the motherboard.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
I have seen some licensing schemes that apply to per-processor costs... 1 CPU = $1,000, 2 CPU = $2,000 etc.
How long will it take to argue that consumers with a dual core processor should pay 2x the price? I'm betting not long.
One more crippling bombshell hit the already beleaguered *BSD community when IDC confirmed that *BSD market share has dropped yet again, now down to less than a fraction of 1 percent of all servers. Coming on the heels of a recent Netcraft survey which plainly states that *BSD has lost more market share, this news serves to reinforce what we've known all along. *BSD is collapsing in complete disarray, as fittingly exemplified by failing dead last in the recent Sys Admin comprehensive networking test.
You don't need to be a Kreskin to predict *BSD's future. The hand writing is on the wall: *BSD faces a bleak future. In fact there won't be any future at all for *BSD because *BSD is dying. Things are looking very bad for *BSD. As many of us are already aware, *BSD continues to lose market share. Red ink flows like a river of blood.
FreeBSD is the most endangered of them all, having lost 93% of its core developers. The sudden and unpleasant departures of long time FreeBSD developers Jordan Hubbard and Mike Smith only serve to underscore the point more clearly. There can no longer be any doubt: FreeBSD is dying.
Let's keep to the facts and look at the numbers.
OpenBSD leader Theo states that there are 7000 users of OpenBSD. How many users of NetBSD are there? Let's see. The number of OpenBSD versus NetBSD posts on Usenet is roughly in ratio of 5 to 1. Therefore there are about 7000/5 = 1400 NetBSD users. BSD/OS posts on Usenet are about half of the volume of NetBSD posts. Therefore there are about 700 users of BSD/OS. A recent article put FreeBSD at about 80 percent of the *BSD market. Therefore there are (7000+1400+700)*4 = 36400 FreeBSD users. This is consistent with the number of FreeBSD Usenet posts.
Due to the troubles of Walnut Creek, abysmal sales and so on, FreeBSD went out of business and was taken over by BSDI who sell another troubled OS. Now BSDI is also dead, its corpse turned over to yet another charnel house.
All major surveys show that *BSD has steadily declined in market share. *BSD is very sick and its long term survival prospects are very dim. If *BSD is to survive at all it will be among OS dilettante dabblers. *BSD continues to decay. Nothing short of a miracle could save it at this point in time. For all practical purposes, *BSD is dead.
Fact: *BSD is dying
They're making the first Desktop Fusion Unit!
I thought AMD won't have dual core CPU until K9. Looks like the company is barking up the wrong processing branch. :)
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/06/01/amd_939/
I survived the Dick Cheney Presidency 7 to 9 AM 7-21-07
I am an Apple lover, but the G5 is going to start feeling some pressure from the dual core chips. I wonder if the rumor of Apple possibly switching to an Intel Processor could becoming more and more valid every day.
:).
I'll still take a G5 notebook within the next year
Im trying to get a new site off the ground, so if you guys are interested check it out GroupShares.com. It is a day trading/stock community.
Thanks,
Aj
-------
artlu.net
You're planning on waiting more than a full year between computer upgrades? Are you sure you're on the right website?
How can we continue to believe in a just universe and freedom to eat crackers if we have no ale?
I could see a big future of heatsink business in Intel and AMD's plans.
There is a spark in every single flame bait point.
You'll need a new motherboard.
The DDR memory interface appears to wrap around both L2 caches, meaning that it looks like both cores have their own 128-bit memory interface; whether or not both memory controllers will be enabled is another thing, but if this is true we have a number of implications to talk about. If dual core Opterons do indeed have two memory controllers, the pincount of dual core Opterons will go up significantly - it will also make them incompatible with current sockets. AMD is all about maintaining socket compatibility so it is quite possible that they could only leave half of the memory controllers enabled, in order to offer Socket-940 dual core Opterons. AMD isn't being very specific in terms of implementation details, but these are just some of the options.
Are you a VF grad? Check out the VFMA Alumni Forums VFMA Alumni Forum
is dilithium cores!
From the article. "If dual core Opterons do indeed have two memory controllers, the pincount of dual core Opterons will go up significantly - it will also make them incompatible with current sockets. AMD is all about maintaining socket compatibility so it is quite possible that they could only leave half of the memory controllers enabled, in order to offer Socket-940 dual core Opterons. AMD isn't being very specific in terms of implementation details, but these are just some of the options."
Will this be Sockett 939?
It seems highly unlikely that it will, seeing how the extra pin on 940 is supposed to deal with/control multiple processors.
Every time anyone says "Apple is moving to Intel" it's frickin' hilarious.
To be perfectly honest, it depends how rich you are. At the end of the day when it comes to buy now, buy later; the state of technology generally speaking is that in most cases (particularly with computer hardware) after only a short period of time , whatever technology you invest in becomes obsolete.
...
From my own personal point of view, my dual athlon 1.5ghz is still holding out beautifully. When the cash comes my way Im banking on a powerbook. Truth is I dont need another desktop just yet. However if i had a stupid disposable income, and one that predictably would hold out till these dual cores come out id proabably get one now, and get one later.
When I built this machine I bought the highest spec parts I could afford at the time and I havent upgraded for 2 or 3 years aside from upgrading the graphics card. The rule I live by is get the best available that you can afford at the time and it should keep you going for a good while.
Im running gentoo box; faster processors would be very nice for source compiles but I gave up on churning out seti blocks a while ago and dont have a massive reason for further processor power
Electronic Music Made Using Linux http://soundcloud.com/polyp
*Yawn*
Dual cores processors seem to me like a pretty good alternative to a dual processor system. You don't have the hassle of 2 huge coolers blowing out hot air, the mainboards are don't have to be overpriced and it is already supported by all OS.
Some years ago I was thinking about getting a dual processor system. Alone the motherboard was two times as expensive as a similar single processor one, applications did not support it all and so on. I hope newer applications are ready for dual cores. Quake III was the first game I know that used two processors and finally I can consider that animated desktop background.
Is there a list which applications can effectively use dual cores besides obvious things like webservers?
Anything multithreaded. Which is just about any modern GUI app.
-
Wait, socket 939 is real!? I thought the concept of a 939-pin CPU was some sort of hyperbolic joke!
MSFT, Oracle, and others already argue that.
The commercial software vendors may be slovenly
about keeping up with security patches, but they
jump on extra money like rabid ferrets on raw meat.
News for Geeks in Austin, TX
Now I'll have to pay SCO $1,149 instead of $699.
Yeah, right
"Eve of Destruction", it's not just for old hippies anymore...
Seeing as the G5 is, more or less, a sinlge core from the larger IBM Power4 processor, I'm not seeing that it would be a large problem to make dual core chips.
I highly doubt Apple will switch to x86, it's a pride thing if nothing else. Also, at this point, a switch would upset everything. It could have been done, potentially, with the OS-X switch. Since software was having to be ported to a new OS, a new architecture port is just one more thing. Now, however, x86 Macs would be binary incompatible with PPC Macs. That means emulation, which isn't very efficient.
I think Apple is pretty much stuck on PPC for good.
Just when I thought I had saved up enough money between upgrades to splurge on those fancy ramen noodles, you know, the one with the dried peas, this comes along.
Hey, Wal-Mart brand noodles are only 8 cents!
AMD was the first to announce dual core. Intel had to re-adjust their roadmap to pull dual core in from 2006 to 2005.
Only if the application is doing time consuming stuff in at least two threads. You say any modern GUI app, so is Firefox rendering a page multithreaded? What about my DVD Player Software, Games, TeX, Maple?
Robots are cool!
Its amusing to watch the chip manufacturers scramble desperately to meet the recommend specifications for Longhorn in time.
Oh, c'mon don't look at me like that. A slashdot story without some kind of Microsoft snipe just wouldn't be the same now, would it?
Alright, fine. I'll pick on SCO or AdTi next time. Sheesh. /me crawls back under his rock
She's built like a steak house, but she handles like a bistro....
multiple cores seems like a temporary solution to me... eventually the multiple cores will have to get smaller and deal with heat issues as well, so we'll be back at square 1.5
The following people accidently mistyped their e-mail addresses, rendering them incapable of receiving your generous offers of impotence treatment and mail-order brides. Luckily I have corrected this oversight for the benefit of your hard working spiders. Enjoy.
n @iceboarders.come lotbob.orgu .net
psx@fimble.com
trivista@cox-internet.com
hayd
k4_pacific@yahoo.com
ocelot@oc
bonzobuddy@openspeech.org
artlu@artl
doesn't require 5 loud fans in the case to keep it cool enough
While I understand the desire to build your own and preferring not to be vendor locked, you G5 fan comments are quite ignorant. The Apple G5's are well designed and exceptionally well layed out to create thermal zones serviced by different variable speed vans. It is a very quiet solution. Do not confuse the G5 with some of the homebuilt Athlon abominations that have poor layout, poor airflow, and require multiple screaming fans. YMMV.
While the idea of dual core cpus is really cool, and will take over shortly due in part to the fact that we need something to do with all those extra transistors, I wonder why the focus of the industry is on chip multi-processors (CMP).
.
While CMP processors can give us rougly the same performance of a standard SMP system (somewhat faster due to interprocessor communication and shared memory, but also slower due to a larger memory bottleneck) I don't think that a CMP system would compete with a simultaneous multi-threading (SMT) solution.
While Intel's response to SMT (hyperthreading) has some benifits the performance of it is rather lackluster. The reason has more to do with their particular implementation. If you've read about the initial observations on SMT an 8-way SMT processor was shown to outperform a 4-way CMP processor. Now, I must note that the 8-way smt processor had more functional units then the cores in the 4-way CMP processor, but the overall area of the 8-way SMT processor would be much much smaller (far less structures need to be duplicated for SMT as opposed to CMP). For more information on this check out some of the papers at http://www.cs.washington.edu/research/smt/
What I don't understand is the insistance of the industry to use CMP first. From everything I've read, an 8-way SMT processor should take up less die space then a two way CMP processor. Even assuming that the 8 way processor contains more functional units. It kind of makes sense that a CMP processor is faster when there aren't enough threads to fully utilize a SMT processor (say only 2 or 3 threads that want full cpu usage). I guess SMT is a big chance in the model of programming and application development (I'm currently running research on the subject which is why I'm so interested in it). Is the reason to embrace CMPs simply because there's less new technology to add (they "just" have to interconnect two cores as opposed to adding the extra logic for SMT).
Does anyone else have any other opinions regarding this matter, or any idea why no one seems to be fully embracing SMT's potential.
Philip Garcia
You'd notice the most difference if you had one CPU bound app and a ton of others that weren't. For example you were running some big simulation or POVray, and at the same time checking your e-mail and surfing the web. With two processors even if the prorams don't use them (they aren't SMP aware), as long as the OS is (Linux and Windows NT/2k/XP for example) things will be smoother because one CPU can do the heavy lifting, and the other can juggle the little tasks so you're not stuck waiting 100ms here and there for your interactive task to get CPU time.
It sounds a little odd and I'm sure I haven't described it very well, but trust me, things feel smoother on my dual PIII 600 even when heavily loaded than my PIII 933 when it's only mildly loaded. If you already have a 3.4ghz processor, the effect probably won't be as pronounced.
PS: Quake III did support SMP, but as I remember it didn't take full advantage and it didn't provide a huge performance boost. Are there any (big) games that DO take full advantage of dual processors? With HyperThreading and such, I would think that would be more common now.
Comment forecast: Bits of genius surrounded by a sea of mediocrity.
I will finally be able to run Linux in VMWare with a VMWare instance running Windows98 running Bochs running BeOS emulating OSX with PearPC. Thank you AMD, you have guaranteed me alpha male status in the CS department for a semester.
Click here or a puppy gets stomped!
Sim city 4 ?
Will it at least inlcude a cupon to buy a Cray?
He he he.
Comment forecast: Bits of genius surrounded by a sea of mediocrity.
AMD is shooting themselves in the foot with this constant changing of sockets for their processors. Rather than buying a mobo that can support a faster chip and then upgrading the processor, people are just WAITING. They're not buying anything at all.
If AMD isn't careful, customers are going to wait AMD out of a lot of market share.
The architecture as I understand it also creates the ability to moderate CPU temperature by switching between cores as the temperature rises too much. So that both cores can be running flat out if you have great heatsink, but if the levels get to hot through insufficient heat dissapation or heavy CPU usage then it is possible to switch a core 'off'. Of course all this is controlled by the MB and CPU, leaving no opportunity for errors by the users.
I couldn't think of a sig.
Why not take an older processor (e.g. i80486) that already is basically single cycle execution -- or Pentium which has two execution pipes already -- update it to modern geometry which should increase speed and decrease power, and put as many as you can easily fit onto the die? After all, those older cores execute all the basic i86 code including MMX with a lot less transistors. How much does SSE, SSE2 and HT contribute verses a lot of cores just executing threads with little context switching?
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
Hector Ruiz already stated plainly in an interview that the dual-core Opterons will be socket compatible with the the current Socket 940. It should be noted that Socket 940 is for Opteron only (servers) not the Athlon64/FX and according to Hector he highly doubts that they will produce a dual-core chip for the desktop/mobil market. That's pretty understandable considering that 90% of all desktops/laptops go under-utilized nowadays anyway. Socket 939 is for Athlon64 desktops and the newly redesigned AthlonFX.
Can't wait to see the heat sink that goes with it!
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
The principle reason why the Opterons are kicking the trash out of Intel's Xeon line is the memory bandwidth - with each processor you stick in the board, you're getting another 128-bit memory controller. With a well-designed OS, that equates to enormous potential memory bandwidths.
I've been a little leary of the dual-Opteron stories. Yes, it'll let you pack more CPU's into your board: But will you be able to utilize the additional memory controller in that extra core? If so, it will rock trash. If not, then it's losing the key strength of the Opteron.
Now, it *could* be done. The existing Opteron pinouts provide for four DIMM sockets. With dual-core chips, that same pinout could provide *two* DIMM sockets for each of the two cores. If that's how they go, then AMD is going to continue their incredibly strong showing in the server arena.
(FWIW, I just bought a 4x848 Opteron system, and it is a *screamer* at database work!)
steve
Oh, you're not stuck, you're just unable to let go of the onion rings.
This raises questions regarding stability and Windows.
While I find that multiprocs settings under Linux improve things to a significant degree (although there are still outstanding issuess with NVidia proprietary drivers and SMP), I found the opposite true for Windows.
The last time I tried, which was about 2-3 years ago, many drivers didn't seem to expect true concurency under Win2k and I was experiencing significantly more crashes on my dual P-III than when I forced the system to only use one of the CPUs. Yet it probably wasn't the hardware because that same machine was very stable with Linux.
With the advence of hyper-threading, have things improved markedly with WinXP?
Don't you mean $1,398? Or are you doing your math on an old Pentium -- in which case your really do need an upgrade.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
SCO charges $1,149 for a dual license. Check their website, Darl.
"Eve of Destruction", it's not just for old hippies anymore...
Sure, but given the option of dual-core processors, I want a system with two of them... I know, it's a fetish, what can I say?
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
But then, the trick is that he did not mention memory latency, only bandwidth! Getting the latter is relatively easy -- just make memory bus wider (as given bus speed), trying to decrease latency will pretty soon make you run into speed-of-light limitation.
;-)
Maybe those processors do have enough memory bandwidth to load two of them completely doing SAXPY? Assuming 12 GFLOPS sustained (3 GHz, 2 cores, separate ADD and MUL on each) you need to feed input vectors at 12*8 bytes/double = 96 GB/sec, for, say 1 GHz memory bus it is translated into 96*8=768 memory pins only for input -- well, wider than I've seen on desktop PCs...
When you start doing anything else , the roundtrip time between processors and memory (latency) becomes more important than raw bandwidth.
Paul B.
Multithreaded and multi-process.
If Firefox is rendering a page, you've got Firefox doing the rendering, the GUI working with video drivers, disk drivers looking at/updating your browser's cache, kernel code managing disk cache, kernel code managing network activity, and perhaps even firewall code running.
Whether you use Linux or Windows, there are a LOT of things running that you don't see in normal process list.
Now, will dual CPU's speed up that render time in Firefox? Not to any significant amount. But having used a LOT of dual-CPU systems, I can say that under heavy load, the machine will be much more responsive. If that helps your workload, it might be worth it. If it doesn't, it's not worth it.
As an example, at work I have a dual AthlonMP 1800+. At home, I have a single AthlonXP 3200+. For what I do at work, the single-proc chip would suck rocks. For what I do at home, the 1800+ would not compare to the 3200+. It's all about your usage.
steve
Oh, you're not stuck, you're just unable to let go of the onion rings.
Because the K8 has the memory controller on die, as you add processors, you actually add memory bandwidth. It kinda stands the old logic on its head. Really the only thing that can be an issue on this core is latency can make a difference at 16 CPUs or more ;-)
[RIAA] says its concern is artists. That's true, in just the sense that a cattle rancher is concerned about its cattle.
My bad! Who would have ever expected SCO to be that nice about anything?
Maybe we need to check their website more often. Yeah, all of Slashdot check their website every day to see if anything has changed. That would be good.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
The current Opteron has dual channel controllers. There really isn't that much of a reason to go dual dual channel when in many situations, the single channel Athlon 64's outperform the Opterons because of reduced latency (no registered dimms).
[RIAA] says its concern is artists. That's true, in just the sense that a cattle rancher is concerned about its cattle.
no that extra ping provides market segmentation...ha.
Actually, the pinouts are very different between S940 and S939. I think they originally were going to do all of them as 940's and realized the issues that would cause (the power leads are in different places, for instance).
[RIAA] says its concern is artists. That's true, in just the sense that a cattle rancher is concerned about its cattle.
By then, maybe IBM will have enough 3GHz G5s for your Mac!
There exists no way of exchanging information without making judgments. --Bene Gesserit Axiom
I didn't see this anywhere else... sorry if a repost.
The dual-core opteron's will be fully pin compatible with the current ones. Have a dual-opteron? drop a couple new ones in, and its a quad.
Awesome.
Guess what? I got a fever! And the only prescription.. is more cowbell!
In a quote from AMD's CEO taken from http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=15605: "And he said that next year its dual chip Opteron-whatever will "shock the hell" out of everyone because it will be pin compatible, hardware compatible and otherwise compatible with existing motherboards."
So I'm reasonably sure that current Opteron/Socket 940 users will be able to use Dual-core chips as long as the bios supports it.
I see lots of conversation comparing this generation of processor to space heaters, wisecracks about Longhorn minimum systems (that actual article was about the predicted "average", not minimum). Not much about actual multi-cores. They're an interesting direction to go.
The current direction of single core CPUs is basically running into the most they can do with XUs, MPUs, caches, etc. Sure, you can decrease the pipeline depth below the 18FO4 that the PentiumIV supposedly has, and that can help you with serial data paths, and that makes simple XUs, MPUs, etc. faster, but the branch mispredict is still horrendous -- perhaps too high for a general purpose processor found in our PCs. The more complicated logic is possible to do, but there's only so much you can do with the data and sub-Angstrom logic.
Beyond the geek factor, multiple cores on a single die attack the same problems as putting SMP did in the first place (plus a few race conditions that otherwise may have been very rare), allowing much less manpower to design a processor that is still much faster in the end. A single threaded application will seem slower, and that will place more burden on the developers to see the light of multiple threads. Instead of allowing an XU to munge through and deal with a single thread at a time, which may be a misuse of incredible resource (like a thread that said "go to grocery store" and the XU was a race car), multiple die have correspondingly multiple XUs each with their own resources, so hard tasks can be spread across multiple cores, or simple ones can get executed in parallel with others (like a thread can take a Kia to the grocery store while another Kia goes to the Post Office). Of course, problems that cannot be divided into multiple threads do not see the advantage of multiple cores, but other tasks remain responsive without requiring a monster task to context switch.
I've read about multiple cores that share a single L2 outperforming multiple cores with dedicated L2s in specific tasks, basically one core essentially acts like a pre-fetch core under a workload and the second core can reap the benefits.
Well it seems AMD has decided to follow suit.
It should be noted that the K8 architecture has had this designed in from the start.
Who exactly is following suit ?
"UPDATE: A representative for Intel Corporation told X-bit labs the company had never released any precise details in regards the dual-core strategy. The information published herein should not be considered as based on official statements."
OR NOBODY KNOWS HOW TO READ ANYMORE!
I think you're getting your terminology mixed up here. Even Windows 3.1 had multitasking, though it was cooperative. When you have multiple cores in use, you're not just multitasking, you're multiprocessing. That is to say, two processes can be active at once, because you have two separate contexts. Arguably this is true of the Hyperthreading (I refuse to call it HT, that's what I call HyperTransport) Pentium IV as well, since it also has two contexts.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Can't wait to see the heat sink that goes with it!
Sure it can't be any worse than this Prescott heatsink/jet engine!
PS. Baah, what am I rambling about this to 'greedy capitalist', they freakenzie want to squeeze as much 'juce' as possible (and 'updates/upgrades' is their 'golden goose' ...)
I don't claim I know more than I know, and if you know you know more than I know, then by all means, let me know.
Err, these dual-core Opterons are going to be socket 940 compatible, just like existing Opterons.
This simple fact kinda of makes your rant completely pointless.
how could you yawn at that!! i'm sitting here in the office laughing!! a classic post, and not one I had noticed before :)
:)
parent poster.... please keep them coming!!
...the Intels have been putting out more total power. The AMDs have been putting out more power/die space. One leads to bigger case fans (remove heat from case), one to bigger CPU fans (remove heat from CPU). Overall, neither is quiet at least.
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
What I actually expect to toast everything around in a couple years, and at a surprisingly affordable price, will be the Sony/IBM Cell Processor.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
Great! That will be just on time for Doom 3, Half-Life 2 and Duke Nukem Forever.
I love C++
Let me explain something, though it may have already been done for many of you. You joke about more cores, but both groups are surely already in the process of adding more cores to their architectures. Granted I heard my news through a third party but apparently they know a person at Intel who said there was development of upwards of 16 cores on a single chip. .09 soon and there is technology to get that down even smaller. Before the limitations on the expansion of the speed of a chip were often affected by Cache size. Look at the crazy performance given by doubling cache sizes on a CPU. The problem is Cache is expensive to place on a chip, cores are not. Expect the new war in the CPU world to be more along the lines of more cores and not so much on clock speeds. This is part of the reason the companies are trying to break the traditional numbering schemes for processors and inventing convoluted messes of numbers that literally mean nothing.
The reason this works out as more is better is simply because we can. Think about how small the processes have gotten. Most will be over to
My only concern so far has been on the usefulness of dual cores. I am sure they have made some sort of hardware method to allow current software to continue treating the chip as a single CPU, because otherwise it would be pretty useless to have what amounts to really having twice the CPU on the same chip space since most software isn't multithreaded to handle multiple chips. But I am sure they have taken care of this. Better stop before I look like I am rambling....
"Some days you just can't get rid of a bomb."
Yes and No, yes the Cell processors are going to be shockingly fast (especially when set up for stream processing) but they are vector cores (8 per Cell), not general purpose CPUs. You're not gong to run an OS on a Cell, it's not designed for it.
Get the new Osbourne64 when it comes out. They say it will be compatible with all future processors.
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OK dual mobo's are more expensive but they are normally better built plus once you have use a dual machine as a desktop you won't go back, it just so much snappier.
applications did not support it all and so on. I hope newer applications are ready for dual cores. Quake III was the first game I know that used two processors and finally I can consider that animated desktop background.When you buy and multi CPU machine for home/desktop use you have to think multiprocessing your work. Ok so some apps don't use the benefit of SMP natively, why do run two CPU heavy apps at once? IE play games + play mp3/ogg files without shutter? (ok not a good example but you get the idea).
Is there a list which applications can effectively use dual cores besides obvious things like webservers?Anything is that is multithreaded or multi processed (databases etc) will take advantage of a SMP environment
It said "windows 98 or better" so I installed Linux
Look up Red Storm and the other massive systems. You can use bridge chips and hyptertransport switches to bridge 8 - way nodes. You can go 4 way glueless, 8 way with glue, and up to a number limited by interconnect and latency (who knows how high that is...more than the 10,000 node systems proposed by Cray...and they should know).
[RIAA] says its concern is artists. That's true, in just the sense that a cattle rancher is concerned about its cattle.
No, I'm aware. I was just saying that multitasking seems much much smoother when you have two processors than when you have one.
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You my good man are dead on. I have a PIIx300 system, and it is more responsive then my athlon 1700. not faster -- more responsive. Back in 1998 when that was a freaking awesome system, remember when burning a CD was a fidgety process and even having your screen saver come on would ruin your cd? Wiht this dual system you could burn a CD and play QuakeII At the same time, it was really great :)
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You're certainly going to run some form of OS on it. You couldn't use it at all otherwise.
IBM has already talked about Cell-based workstations, so they have some ideas on how to use it.
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...are word processing (M$- or Open- Office), Web surfing, and E-mail... which are for 99% of the people using them more performance limited by the computer-to-network or keyboard-to-chair interfaces than the CPU. Pretty much all of those can be done quite nicely by a 333 Celeron or PPC750 233MHz chip, running your OS of choice. Games, Video Coding, and Photoshop are the primary CPU intensive operations... leaving aside constantly bloating OSes.
Which was sorta the original point of that idjit: computer gaming, video work, and photoshop are the most common reason for getting USE out of a high-end CPU. Of course, if you routinely use a java script to pop open all forty of your daily web comics, you can shock almost any CPU (and your DNS server) quite nicely. =)
//Information does not want to be free; it wants to breed.
Does this work with a dual-core and a single-core opteron installed to make 3-way SMP, or must both either be dual or single?
... how long did it take for those titles to come out after the PC version came out?
Most of these are *remarkably* dated games. Q3A? FALLOUT?? Starcraft! Come on, man.
+++ATH0
Mach 3 vibrator vs. Schick Quatro
in bed.
27 Dec 2003
Athlon 64 and Opteron dual-core explained
29 Apr 2004
AMD boss says dual core Opteron will plug into existing boards
You say any modern GUI application. This is far from my experience.
All I know avoid threads like the plague, since it introduce a lot of synchronization problems and makes debugging very difficult since the program will in effect behave non-deterministic.
It's true that a GUI application which will need to do some long calculations (like ray-trace an image, compile a source, translate a LaTeX document etc.) will often spawn a thread to do this, but a) how many modern GUI apps work like this? b) the main thread (running the GUI) will have close to no load and c) it spawns only one thread, so the task will not complete in shorter time.
Even an application like a browser could very well be single threaded and use select() to wait for socket activity, and then dispatch new data to the proper page-parser, image-decoder or similar, since the network is unlikely to provide data so fast that the cpu will get a 100% load.
Furthermore, many operating systems move an entire process, with all its threads, from cpu to cpu, but not individual threads (since the communication overhead would affect performance).