Dual Core Intel Processors Sooner Than Expected

Hack Jandy writes "AnandTech reports that Intel's Smithfield processors are going to get here sooner than they originally predicted; most likely within the next few months. Apparently, the Intel roadmaps reveal that the launch dates for next generation desktop chipsets, 2MB L2 Prescotts and Dual Core Smithfield processors (operating at 3.2GHz per core) are almost upon us - way ahead of the original Q4'05 roadmap estimates. Hopefully, that means Intel will actually start shipping the new technology instead of waiting four months after the announcement for retail products."

Comments

my epiphany...

[ltwally]

Has anyone stopped to look at modern software while thinking about Dual-Core?

Both Intel and AMD have decided upon dual-core as the future of desktop computing. There will be no more massive Mhz increases... instead the focus is now on parallel computing.... But, seriously, how many CPU intensive applications outside of the server arena take advantage of SMP?

As someone who has ran dual-cpu workstations for years, I can personally attest to the fact that 99% of CPU heavy tasks do not make use of SMP.

Think about it... That copy of Doom3 or Half-Life 2 that you just bought, that runs like shit on even top-of-the-line hardware, isn't going to run any better on Dual-Core, because these games are not designed to run multiple threads simultaneously. Neither do most archival programs (WinAce, WinRar, WinZip, SevenZip, etc etc). Nor do many of your encoding tools (though FlaskMPEG and GoGo-No-Coda are noteworthy exceptions).

As a geek, I can attest that the *nix arena isn't much better. Just because the source is open and available does NOT mean that the author(s) ever considered coding CPU intensive tasks for multiple processors. And "porting" tasks from single threaded to multiple threads is NOT a simple task. This is one of the reasons that there are Computer Science degrees -- writing good SMP code isn't something you learn at technical schools (or even half the full Universities out there).

Don't get me wrong... as someone who has ran SMP boxes for the past 10 years, I'm really excited about Dual-Core. But don't expect it to be worth a whole lot for the immediate future... as no one outside the server arena really codes for SMP.

Re:my epiphany...

[Rob_Bryerton]

Frankly, I'm bewildered at the responses here resisting the change to SMP. I've never understood the focus on pure MHz as opposed to parallelism and MHz. Anyone on an SMP box that is multitasking sees the benefits of SMP immediately. You can work with a completely responsive system even when you have a compute-intensive non-SMP-aware process hogging a CPU. This is not the case with single CPU sysems.

What we have here is simply the fact that, as always, software is years behind the hardware it runs on. This is a classic chicken-and-the-egg situation. "There's no SMP software, so why by a dual?" vs. "Nobody has SMP hardware, so why write SMP-aware apps?".

Thankfully, there are many SMP-aware apps available, not even getting to the fact that with single-threaded apps on SMP you can for example encode video and do other CPU-intensive tasks simultaneously and at their "native" speeds.

Games are probably the worst example to use for touting SMP benefits because they are written with the single-CPU mindset. This is a software shortcoming, yet many posters see this is a flaw of SMP? Silly. If you're using games as an SMP detraction, then you're not the target for SMP until the software is written to take advantage of SMP. Again, this is a software shortcoming, not a hardware flaw.

Then we have the "well office-type users have no need for SMP". Well, that may be true, but so is the fact that office use does not require >1GHz CPU's, yet offices are filled with >1GHz machines. The nature of the "CPU business" is such that your products must constantly improve, or you will soon become irrelevant. You can only make CPU's run so fast in the physical world, so after you've wrung all the easy MHz gains out of a process, what's the next "easy" gain? Parallelism. We don't expect Intel, AMD, et al to just say "Well, that's it, we can make them no faster", do we? Heck no. Instead of more MHz, we now have more cores. The software will follow, and in the meantime the hardware is usuable now.

The fact of the matter is this: there are real, physical limitations to the manufacture of ever higher speed CPU's. We're going to hit the brick wall shortly using current processes, so the next logical step is to parallelize the CPU. If you can't make 'em faster, then you divide and conquer.

As someone who runs a few SMP systems, I, for one, welcome our dual-core overlords. So I can run dual-core? Heck no, that's for the gamers and office-workers ;). I'll settle for no less than dual dual-cores, getting more accomplished in a shorter frame of time with little to no effort on my part.

This will lower the barrier of entry for SMP use for the masses. After they are dragged, kicking and screaming to SMP, people will notice a smoother, more productive computing environment. Also, us dual-CPU folk can now move up to quad cores with relatively little additional expense. As SMP moves into the mainstream, the software will follow. Any programmer worth his salt knows that it is trivial to parallelize many compute intensive tasks such as media encoding/manipulation, imaging, rendering etc. Now that the hardware is (almost) here, the apps will follow.

I am sincerely interested in hearing any response to these points I've made.