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Dual-Core Pentium 4 Slated For 2Q 2005
Quantrell writes "Today is the first full day of the International Solid-State Circuits Conference in San Francisco, and Intel has announced that dual-core Pentium 4s are
coming in the second quarter, one in the Extreme Edition line (no surprise there), and also the Smithfield
Pentium 4 800 series, which is the next so-called consumer desktop line. No word on pricing, yet."
Twice the inefficiency!
While dual processors is great and all, I'd rather see double the memory bandwidth then double the processing power. In the case of Intel processors (especially duals) memory bandwidth is severly lacking, and while DDR-2 should help a bit, I don't expect to be that impressed with the new dual cores.
you may come out with dual-cores before AMD, but since your dual-core is a kludge on top of a kludge, I'm guessing AMD will beat you again.
Your hair look like poop, Bob! - Wanker.
What about P5? I will need it to play my copy of Duke Nukem Forever!
I believe they have 64 bit instructions as well.
Intel was quiet about implementing that since its an AMD tech.
Now I can fry two eggs at once!
If my answers frighten you, stop asking scary questions.
"No word on pricing, yet."
Is that kind of like saying "if you have to ask, you can't afford it"?
P4 EE - $989
Gotta go; I have to sell a kidney or three to afford this thing...
I was in the park the other day wondering why frisbees get bigger and bigger the closer they get - and then it hit me.
-David Ziegler
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Motorola/IBM have had multi-core PPCs demonstrated ever since the very, very first G4 lab units all those years ago.
Yet no one has ever productized a multi-core PPC. (Unless you count the Cell, which you probably shouldn't.)
Why is this?
Is there something about multicore technology which caused IBM/Motorola to decide it was not worth the bother of putting in a box and selling?
Inversely, is there something about multicore technology that makes Intel think we'd actually start caring about the P4 again once it's included?
since 90nm fab times should be on the order of 4-5 months, I'd assume Intel is running these in fairly high volumes (and has been for a month or so)
The notion of having a dual core processor is ridiculous. I mean, with just one processor I'm perpetually afraid that my computer will attain self-awareness, and with 350 watts or so at its disposal there's no telling what kind of havoc it'll wreak upon my tender organic tissues. Now with two processors in my computer box there's no telling what kind of trouble I'll be exposed to. Why don't you just embed a .357 Magnum revolver into the chipset? Processor designers are deranged.
Not really. Intel has been playing catchup all this time, first with 64-bit and now with dual core. Opteron was built from the ground up to support more than one core, which is the beauty of it.
/. story refers to. "Yonah" is somewhere in the future.)
Here's a long discussion on the current dual core situation on Ace's Hardware. (They use a lot of codenames. "Smithfield" I think is what this
Well, now with two cores that are near half as efficient, I think they are just about to catch up. :)
Pretty Pictures!
I'm a little leery of getting excited about having more juice squeezed out of the P4 line, and maybe it's because I'm not entirely clued into the extent of the benefits gained from dual-core P4s. Are they doing this just to gain time before they introduce a new architecture?
I'm looking to build a new AMD-based system this summer, even if they are a little later-to-the-dual-core-table. As far as I can tell, this news doesn't present any substantive reason for me to change that plan.
Can someone more knowledgeable help me get some perspective on this?
.. pa-ra-bo-la, pa-ra-bo-la, 2 pi R, 2 pi R, where's your latus rectum, where's your latus rectum, 2 pi R
Only if you hold the charts upside down.
AMD has been providing working real dual-core samples to partners for months, whilst dual-core Intel processors are apparently in short supply.
This smells of Intel running to get there first before AMD, so they aren't second again with a technology.
HyperThreading is disabled in the Smithfield dual-core product too, so expect a mere 50% overall performance increase at the same clock speed (2.8GHz, 3GHz, 3.2GHz soon afterwards) for Intel. AMD stand to gain more from dual-cores, as they have no HyperThreading equivalent at the moment, and AMD have said that dual 2.4GHz will be possible, that's two 4000+ rated processors, probably overall performance of 6000-7000+. That's a bit better than the 5000+ performance from a dual core Smithfield.
Dual core AMD will likely perform a lot higher than dual core Intel therefore.
The jokes about the heat these puppies will pump out couldn't be more appropriate. An article at Tom's states that the Smithfield core has a thermal design power of 130W making it by far the hottest x86 CPU ever seen.
In contrast, AMD's dual core offering will offer no increase in TDP over their present single core designs.
For all intensive porpoises your a bunch of rediculous loosers
I mean, I assume that unless Windows is rewritten to take advantage of dual cores that you won't see much performance increase. And I assume that just getting OS support won't be enough for applications to really see much improvement either.
SO unless you're a reasonable l33t linux dude/dudette, or I've missed the boat (also possible I'm sure), where do I see the advantage of this system?
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More craziness here too :-)
The question then becomes one of how well the existing motherboards would cope of course. The ideal would be for it to be entirely transparent and the dual cores are handled by the CPU in a similar manner to hyperthreading. If that's not possible then we'd be looking at a BIOS update at least, and even then it might not be possible to maximise the benefit of dual cores with out a motherboard designed for the purpose.
In any case, with AMD in a similar situation with its own upcoming dual core CPUs, it's going to interesting to see how the two companies approach it. There's going to be some unhappy customers if one company manages to enable upgrades to dual cores on current motherboards and the other doesn't, that's for sure...
UNIX? They're not even circumcised! Savages!
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It works exactly the same as an SMP system. Any OS capable of handling SMP will be able to handle this, including WinXP Pro (but not "Home").
As for app support, any time you're doing a task that is parallelizable, you may be able to benefit.
If you are running two totally different processes at once, then you get immediate benefits. (And immediate subtle bugs, if the processes share resources and weren't properly written for SMP).
If you are running a single multi-threaded app, you get immediate benefits. (And immediate subtle bugs, if the app wasn't properly written for SMP).
If you only run a single app, and that app has only a single thread, then you will not gain much at all.
Nere's a pic of the new form factor that they will be using for the case.
More
AMD fans, meanwhile, can still hope that their dual-core parts will run in Socket 939.
Kevin McGrath (AMD's chief architect of x86-64) gave a talk about dual cores at my school last month. I asked him if 939 would support dual cores, and he said it would, though he didn't have a timetable. He also reiterated that we'll be seeing dual cores coming on all product lines.
Part of the reason AMD can do this, I think, is their discipline in keeping a consistent power envelope, so the motherboard and heatsink manufacturers don't have to scramble to support a new incredibly hot processor. I anticipate that Smithfield will require massive cooling.
The other reason is the memory controller is built onto the processor, as opposed to Intel's traditional arrangement of it being on the North Bridge of the chipset. Thus no change of chipset is needed (in theory).
Honestly. The Dual Core Intel Pentium Processor Extreme Edition with Hyper-Threading Technology.
Am I the only one that thinks that sounds funny? Like someone took a steaming PR doodoo into the buzzword generator at Intel?
Personally, I think I'll hold off until they release the Dual Core Intel Pentium Processor Fusion Edition Titanium Pack PRO with Spastic-Threading Nano-Techno-Giga-Awesome Technology.
There is a good article on AMDZone that talks about how AMD is doing it's dual-core. They have put 2 cpus each with their own cache but they share the on-chip memory controller and the hypertransport links. According to AMD, there is only a 10% loss in performance by using the shared components.
Not bad considering you only have to have one socket on your motherboard to accomodate a dual processor system now. And it will even work in current motherboards, using the same 939 socket.
Don't count your messages before they ACK.
Windows 2000 SP4 and Windows XP Pro both run fine on a Dual Xeon P4 w/ HT enabled. Task Manager sees 4 CPU's as expected. Pre-SP4 systems might complain because they are unaware of Hyperthreading, but I think MS had not really gone into the overkill mode that highlight XP. Prior to XP they were pretty trusting of folks, license limits were managed via trust. In other words is an 11th client tried to connect it worked, instead of rejecting you with a nasty message about how you need to upgrade to server edition.
You are in a maze of twisted little posts, all alike.
Windows XP recognizes the difference between hyperthreading and seperate processors. I have XP Pro running on a dual P4 with HT enabled - that is, task manager shows four processors. This works fine. I'm not sure if the code to tell the difference was ever backported to Win2K (which shipped before HT existed.)
Odds are that they will do the same thing for multi-core (i.e. not count each core but rather each chip - I am sure that Intel and AMD will provide a way to tell the difference just as they do with HT.)
With HT there's actually more to it than just the lisencing issue - XP treats HT processors differently - it knows that if proc 1 and 2 are really the same chip / proc 3 and 4 are the other chip that given two threads it should prefer to run them on seperate physical processors when possible. I am not sure if issues like this would apply to multi core but they might since the two cores will likely still share some things.
No word on pricing yet
This news bit had been posted on anandtech a bit ago, and seems decently reliable and realistic. 2.8ghz for $241 isn't bad at all, pricing is right between today's prices for a 3.2 and 3.4. I personally though am waiting for AMD's dual cores which will supposedly work on my current motherboard, though it looks like at first the only dual core will be an FX processor, with the insane price that goes with that.