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

Cell Processor

[News for nerds]

It's nothing more than a catch-up move to Sony/Toshiba/IBM Cell, just like EMT64 to catch up AMD. Those late and awkward moves are of bad omen for Intel, IMO.

Re:Cell Processor

[skids]

Agreed. And in addition, really what they need to start doing is specializing the cores. Either that, or following the cell paradigm in reducing the complexity of each core to increase the number of cores, such that you can combine several into a special-function unit.

But we all know that nothing really changes until memory access changes. Memory continues to be the bottleneck, so if the only thing a processor with more cores can do fast is crunch numbers, you'd get more bang for the buck with better/more vector processing units.

Now, if/when they come out with memory that can be reorganized on-the-fly, perform large-scale simple massively-parrallel operations, and do some content-addressable tricks, that will be a signifigant development. I don't know how long it would take that to make it into higher level programming languages, though. It kinda of turns the job of writing programs on it's head.

Re:Cell Processor

[lukasz]

>Now, if/when they come out with memory that can be reorganized on-the-fly, perform large-scale
>simple massively-parrallel operations, and do some content-addressable tricks, that will be a
>signifigant development. I don't know how long it would take that to make it into higher level
>programming languages, though. It kinda of turns the job of writing programs on it's head.

Have you ever stumbled on FPGAs ? It's already there. The problem is, as I see it, it does turn writing programs on it's head. Thus, very few people outside of the hardware design crowd know what to do with them.
Just think how many people do get exposed to digital design vs programming. How many people do go beyond a vague idea of a processor working on data sitting in memory ? How many CS graduates are utterly unhappy about digital design classes ?

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.

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.

Re:Long-term strategy of this?

[Decaff]

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

Why should this have anything to do with the instruction set? The principle is exactly the same as for existing multi-processor systems, but on the same chip.

Have we hit a wall for computational ability?

[Anonymous Coward]

This does not bode well for problems that mathmatically cannot be executed in parallel.

Great

[Anonymous Coward]

Now I can do away with my furnace.

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.

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.

Re:Not that kind of law!

[analog_line]

Gordon Moore, the guy the "law" was named after, works for Intel. Intel puts a fair bit of weight behind the notion behind it, and they even have a page on their research section about it.

Yet again Intel pretends to invent a technology

[Anonymous Coward]

IBM have been doing this for years - and its biggest technological success story, the POWER5 chip shows that Intel are blatantly only playing catch-up with this announcement.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/11/26/ibm_power5 _moores_law/ shows this perfectly.

It reminds me of the way that Intel pretended that they invented integrated wireless technology with its Centrino chip only after Apple had been shipping laptops for nearly two years with internal wireless cards.

Normally, asking if they had no shame would be appropriate but it is unfortunately clear (without the need to ask) that they don't.

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