Intel Expands Core Concept for Chips

Aziabel writes "As most of you have probably heard, Intel plans to come out with chips containing two processing cores next year, but that's just the start. The Santa Clara, Calif.-based chip giant intends to exploit the concept of using multiple processor cores; chips with four cores and eight cores will eventually join dual-core chips, which will begin to appear from Intel next year. The company's research department is also looking at the feasibility of creating chips with hundreds of cores to assist servers and supercomputers with large numbers of relatively repetitive calculations, said Steve Smith, vice president of the desktop platforms group at Intel. The focus on multiple cores arises from Moore's Law, which dictates that the number of transistors on a chip doubles every two years. I say, the more the better. Keep 'em coming, chip-makers!"

Comments

Performance rateing

[Barny]

The problem is with what they (both intel and amd) plan to do is saying a dual core 1.5 centrino (for example) cpu is actually a 3Ghz machine (from the pr they have allready put out about these chips).

Read overclockers.com for some good speculation on what the good/bad/ugly features are likely to be.

Intel is not doing all that well in the core races

[Groo Wanderer]

Intel just canned their 8-way chip and replaced it with a variant of Montecito, or more likely a Montvale derivative. Here is a bit on it:
http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=20270
ht tp://www.theinquirer.net/?article=20286
Needless to say, their long term strategies are a tad up in the air right now.

As for their desktop (IE P4 based) dual core plans, there are 2 generations planned. The first is a simple pairing of 2 current cores with a minimum of tweaks, basically a scared response to AMD. The second one is really the first one they planned, and it is a lot more sophisticated.

AMD was there from long before Day One, and have the most coherent philosophy on dual cores for the desktop/server.

Rather than re-write all my own articles here, here is a link where I break down all of Intel's dual core plans as well as some of AMDs.
http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=17906

Sorry for all the self links, but I don't really want to keep re-writing that stuff, links are the reason behind the web, right? :)

-Charlie

Re:Cell Processor

[wik]

This increases the fabrication costs for the silicon die because the processes used to create high-performance CMOS logic and high-density DRAM are different. Because of the cost, it's not likely to happen for commodity microprocessors any time soon.