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Intel's Dual-core strategy, 75% by end 2006
DigitumDei writes "Intel is moving ahead rapidly with their dual core chips, anticipating 75% of their chip sales to be dual core chips by the end of 2006. With AMD also starting to push their dual core solutions, how long until applications make full use of this. Some applications already make good use of multiple cpu's and of course multiple applications running at the same time instantly benifit. Yet the most cpu intensive applications for the average home machine, games, still mostly do not take advantage of this. When game manufacturers start to release games designed to take advantage of this, are we going to see a huge increase in game complexity/detail or is this benifit going to be less than Intel and AMD would have you believe?"
less heat generated. more bang per watt.
If their going to be that ambitious with their sales, I hope the are concidering pricing the the chips in a price range that anyone could afford and is willing the pay.
"how long until applications make full use of this"
Full use? Probably never. There's always improvements to be made, and multi-threaded programs are a bitch and a half to debug, at least in Linux. Making "full use" of SMP would _generally_ decrease program reliability due to complexity, I would imagine.
But, with an SMP-aware OS (Win2k, WinXP Pro, Linux, etc.), you'll definitely see some multi-tasking benefits immediately. I think the real question is, how will Microsoft adjust their licensing with this new paradigm? Will it be per-core, or per socket/slot?
I'm going to go out on a limb and predict that Longhorn will support 2-way SMP even for the "Home" version.
-Erwos
Plausible conjecture should not be misrepresented as proof positive.
Your statement is true, but I think you missed the point the article poster was trying to get across. Currently games are writeen to use computer resources that way. If the code was written differently for games, they could allocate some of the graphic responsiblities to the 2nd CPU instead of all of it going to the GPU. The 2nd CPU could be used to help the GPU. Allocating more of the now available (2nd CPU) resources to graphics allows more potential in graphics. That's what the article poster wants to see, that game resoure allocation written in the games code be changed to use the 2nd CPU to help enhance graphics in the video game.
I couldn't think of anything witty to say, so...you're stuck with this.
If you consider a factor of about 1.8 (tops) "huge".
Galileo: "The Earth revolves around the Sun!"
Score: -1 100% Flamebait
Yes, but since the core of Intel's marketplace consists of people who see a monitor and think it is the computer, this is a barrier that Intel can easily hurdle.
I think as long as the hardware becomes established, people will write software for it. From time to time, hardware manufacturers have to push the market in order to get the established standard to jump to the next step.
It's like what Subaru did when they decided to make all their vehicles All Wheel Drive. It was a great technology, but most people at the time just didn't care to pay extra for it. By making it a standard feature, the cost increase is significantly reduced, and provided that the technology is actually something functional, the market should grow to accept it.
"No fair, you changed the outcome by measuring it!" - Professor Hubert J. Farnsworth
networking code on a third core
The CPU waiting on networking, even 1Gbits/sec, is like waiting for a raise without asking. It's so little overhead to a modern CPU that using an entire core to do it is an exercise is silliness. If you are worried about any overhead associated with network encryption, etc, you can just spend $45 on an upgraded NIC with that capability built in to its own logic. The CPU never need be bothered.