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Intel and AMD's 2005 Plans Revealed
Takemedown writes "There's a good article on CTZ that talks about Intel and AMD's plans. Intel, continuing on their 18-month chipset refresh rate, will introduce their Glenwood and Lakeport chipsets for the Smithfield dual core desktop microprocessor in 2005. The chipsets will support SATA II, Matrix RAID and a higher system bus speed for the new Pentium 4 name holder.
As far as Intel's dual core strategies are concerned, they will most likely bring their dual core additions by the very end of Q2 or Q3 this year, so for those waiting for these next generation chips are better off with a due upgrade. Secondly, if you are hoping for a noticeable performance gain in regular computing tasks are in for a disappointment. Dual core microprocessors are for those who like to do multitasking or work on multithreaded applications. For example, if you are gaming and burning a DVD at the same time, dual core chips will come in handy and will definitely give a smooth computing experience."
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Is it more efficient memory sharing amongst the different cores?
Slashdot: Where people pretend to be twice as smart as they really are by behaving like children.
Only thieves burn dvds, so I see the MPAA stepping top stop this.
A plea to both Intel and AMD. Please make a nonexpensive SILENT cooling system.
Yeah fans are pretty good but let's be honest, they wear down and become noisy.
Water cooling is great but I've already got one aquarium in my room.
One core was bad. Two? Three? Twenty! Passive heat sinks, huge slabs of copper, whatever, just please, I can't hear myself think.
-Teiresias
Processor power has been overrated for quite some time. A lot of people don't realize that other components, especially RAM matter just as much, if not more in most every day tasks than pure CPU power. If I had a choice between 2GHZ and 1GB ram, vs. a 4GHZ and 512mb ram, I would definatly recommend the former. So although this technology will help some people, most people should stay away from it if you are just doing day to day. Does grandma really need dual core processors for sending email and browsing the web anytime soon? Hell, a 500mhz and 256mb is more than enough for a lot of people to write documents and browse the web, but you will never see such a system on Dell website for $120 :).
When did using computers or the internet become an "experience"? They're tools, nothing more.
Trolling is a art,
Burning a DVD is IO-bound given all the traffic on the PCI bus from the harddrive and to the DVD. Burning a DVD is not CPU-bound, so it doesn't seem like a dual core CPU would actually help that situation.
The reality is most of the server market is their Xeon line and the dual-core Xeons are currently planned for 2006 and maybe even later.
For example, if you are gaming and burning a DVD at the same time, dual core chips will come in handy and will definitely give a smooth computing experience.
Why, of course, doesn't everyone burn DVDs and play games at the same time? I usually burn DVDs when I'm playing GTA: San Andreas, so by the time the DVD is done I've forgotten all about it and the tray opening scares the living shit out of me, so I pull out my penknife and stab the DVD to its rightful death! So with this new dual system you're telling me the DVD will be done so quickly that I won't forget about it? Or will the tray slide out more slowly in a smooth and controlled manner as not to provoke me?
Dual core shares a memory controller, whereas dual processors have seperate memory controllers. AMD's Athlon 64 and Opterons have memory controllers on die, and were originally designed to be dual core. What this means is now two cores on die with one memory controller, communicating through a crossbar (think SGI) architechture. On a side not, imagine where AMD would be if they scrapped 64-bit from the start and released the Athlon 64/Opteron as a dual core from the get go.