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AMD Plans Simultaneous Desktop and Mobile Chip Releases
wh173b0y writes "Tom's Hardware reports that AMD is planning to release both it's dual-core desktop and mobile chips at the same time. This news comes after AMD, who have been fairly quiet since the release of the Athlon FX-55, came up shorter than intel on the release dates for it's dual-core processors. Intel on the other hand has been busy planning more than a dozen different chips to release as well as pressing its software designers to embrace its 64-bit architecture."
Most have no use for dual cores and devs have no reason to implement support until their customers have them.
I don't agree that most people have no use for dual cores. Sure, most applications don't make use of them, but all modern operating systems are multi-tasking and the ability to have one CPU taking care of all of the common busywork while the other one is crunching on whatever your main task is does make a difference.
If you don't believe me, find a dual processor machine sometime and spend some time working on it. It's surprising how much smoother and more responsive it is -- often, a dual-processor machine *feels* faster than a single-processor machine with far more than twice the actual performance. I have a dual 500Mhz PII box that still surprises me every time I touch it. It feels faster than my 1.4 GHz Athlon and seems about as quick to respond as my Athlon64 3400+.
For common tasks, users will find they actually prefer two cores at 1 GHz over one core at 4 GHz. The dual-core machine will be cooler (and therefore quieter) and will often be more responsive, even though it will be much slower at straight-line CPU-bound tasks.
People will like these.
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