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

Long-term strategy of this?

[OccidentalSlashy]

I am beginning to suspect that Intel does things like this simply to make x86's instruction set harder and harder to emulate well.

Kind of like to what I suspect Microsoft has been trying to do against Lindows for a while now, namely complicate their API more and more. And with IE and HTML.

Of course they're well within their rights to try. We'll just build a better idiot savant. Or let Steve Jobs keep making Apples that no one can really imitate in the first place.

Not that kind of law!

[melonman]

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 don't think non-compliance with Moore's Law is a felony. It's an observation, not a statute. Moore's Law arises from the fact that transistor counts keep doubling, not the other way around.

Also, doubling the number of transistors in any way possible doesn't necessarily translate into double the power for any given application. In this case, multiple cores are good news for multi-threaded or forking server apps, but rather less interesting for a lot of desktop apps. Intel obviously has a vested interest in pushing ever larger die sizes, because it does large dies better than anyone else. Whether this will always be in the interests of the rest of the industry, let alone the end user, is less obvious.