Basics of Modern Intel CPUs

Doggie Fizzle writes "For those who think you can drop a Xeon into your Celeron system for an upgrade... 'Although there are currently only two main players in the CPU market, AMD and Intel, the number of choices is still enough to make the typical consumer's head spin. Each manufacturer has a few different models to promote, and many of these models can be found in a few different form factors (namely, the "sockets" to which they connect) that exclude interchangeability. This two-part series of Tech Tips will look at a few details of each of the currently-supported CPU (Central Processing Unit) sockets and how they are all similar and different from one to another' "

Comments

Finally.

[Xzzy]

Thank god someone finally explained what the acronym "CPU" meant, I've been wondering about that for years, quietly bobbing my head like I know what's going on anytime someone mentions it.

And I owe it all to Slashdot.

Re:Finally.

[Shadow Wrought]

Me too. Now that that's taken care I continue researching FPU and GPU. I think that there might be a connection between them, but so far its still up in the air- like my work in figuring out APU...

Re:Finally.

[peragrin]

Just wait till you get to FPGA's.

Just before you do tape it I want to watch your head spin up and explode. :-)

Re:Finally.

[Shadow Wrought]

Pedantry once finished must be completed. Ahem.

APU: Auxiliary Power Unit Apu: Kwik-E-Mart proprietor and Squishy peddler.

That is all.

Re:Finally.

[MyLongNickName]

FPGA: Field Programmable Gate Array

And I always thought it was the more politically correct version of the LPGA. Go figure.

Re:Finally.

[indian_rediff]

While we're at it,
ALU = Arithmetic and Logic Unit, Alu = potato (in Hindi - land from where Apu of Kwik-E-Mart fame comes) :-)

Confusion

[ackthpt]

Also AMD is casting doubt on Intel's claim of dual core. Explains how Intel beat them to market, just do a cheap shortcut.

As if sockets aren't enough, there's now two video card standards AGP and SLI (card: PCI-E) which caught me by surprise. I had to change my order before shipping as I didn't realise I could not use an AGP card with the new SLI/PCI-E configuration. Better? I don't need to spend $$$, my existing video card works fine, I just wanted to upgrade the mobo and CPU.

Re:Confusion

[stienman]

Explains how Intel beat them to market, just do a cheap shortcut.

The article explains:
Although Intel was the first to launch its dual-core processor solution for desktop PCs, Richard commented that a real dual-core processor should be one that integrates two cores onto the same die.

Ah yes, that old trick.
1) Notice other company has beat you to market
2) Panic!
3) Define technology to exclude competitor's product
4) Indicate that you actually beat them to market with a "technically correct (according to our definition)" solution

There are two cores inside one chip package. Who cares whether they are on the same die?

Intel does, that's who. This increases output, since one bad core won't take out a whole chip. Further, the larger the single die, the more likely a problem will occur that ruins the chip.

Eventually it'll make economic and production sense to have them on one die.

Some may think of it as a "cheap trick", but the reality is that
1) The result is the same
2) They went to market first with a working dual-core processor.

AMD will have an easier time overall since their chips run cooler.

-Adam

Re:Confusion

[eht]

Move to PCI-X? I've been using PCI-X cards and slots for about 2 years, just recently have I been using PCI-E, PCI-X is also compatible with standard PCI slots, it's just faster versions of the 64 bit type.

PCI-E (PCI-Express) is a brand new slot of varying lengths which enable different speed cards, x1 slots are capable of of 313 megabytes/sec, x16 which is common for graphics cards is 5000megabytes/sec, twice as fast as AGP 8x.

Current PCI-X speeds for the 133 mhz version is 1067 megabytes/sec(there is also a slower 100 mhz version of PCI-X), there is a PCI-X version2 coming out with bus speeds of up to 533 mhz, enabling 4267 megabytes/sec.

Re:Confusion

[Eugene]

I've never seen a MB chipset that can handle more then 1 AGP bus. but PCI Express is a different beast. the current implementation is that you can have either 1xPCI-E 16lane or 2x PCI-E 8lane configuration, the ovreall *availible* bandwidth is the same. since current gen videocard does not utilize that much bandwidth. future chipset/GPU design might give you more PCI-E lanes to playwith. what I'm really concerned now is the lack of the standard, and forcing People to stick with either ATI chipset/GPU for crossfire, or Nvidia chispet/GPU for SLI.

there are videocards in the works that give you dual GPU on a single board, which might actually be the best solution IMHO.

of course, like people already stated, there are some geeks willing to pay bleeding edge price just to have the fastest FPS in the lan party.

Re:Confusion

[drgonzo59]

Well I care if they are on the same die or not. Being on the same die means faster communication between them it also means less heat, which means a smaller heatsink, less noise and less electricity consumed. Whether it should be called "dual core" or "2x" or whatever marketing lingo is irrelevant for me.

Re:Confusion

[DeadChobi]

VESA. You forgot VESA.

Re:Confusion

[timster]

I don't know what country you're from, but here in the US it's generally understood that an "average" person is far more likely to be drinking beer than working out.

Re:Confusion

[Vellmont]

Some may think of it as a "cheap trick", but the reality is that
1) The result is the same

Absolutely false. CPUs aren't like cables holding up a bridge where you can twist two around each other and get double the strength. You can't just take two CPU cores on seperate dies and put them in the same package and expect the same peformance as a single die CPU. First of all there needs to be communication between the two cores. That slows down performance by quite a bit. If you look at the performance differences between the AMD dual core and Intel dual core the performance differences become readily apparant.

2) They went to market first with a working dual-core processor.

If by market you mean a paper release only, and not actually making dual-core P4s available to anyone but a select few. The truth is that Intel announced dual-core CPUs before AMD did, but you can actually get a dual-core AMD chip right now. A quick trip over to pricewatch.com has listings for dual-core opterons, but strangely no dual-core P4s. Are you really suggesting that it makes any real difference who announced dual-core first, but getting ahold of actual product doesn't?

Re:Confusion

[eht]

PCI-Express was formerly known as 3GIO, which was the main competitor to PCI-X, though PCI-X was never intended to really be much more than transitory.

All busses come and go, at least PCI-Express is not a retarded one like AGP, which has no real limitation to be only used to graphics, you could make a RAID card or anything else that requires lots of bandwidth and place it there too, gamers and their graphics just seemed to most people to be the only ones who "needed" that kind of bandwidth.

Only two ?

[alexhs]

Although there are currently only two main players in the CPU market, AMD and Intel [...]

Huh ?
What about IBM and all those embedded CPUS ?
Did you mean PC Desktop CPU market ?

Re:Only two ?

[spaceyhackerlady]

On a day-to-day basis I run in to four kinds of CPUs: x86 (typing this on one), UltraSPARC (most of the boxes at work, plus an Ultra 5 I bought on EBay to play with), ARM (my Palm - one of the new ones), Power PC (stuff at work) and several 68k derivatives (various boxes at work from little to seriously studly).

This doesn't include the niche processors, Analog Devices and TI DSPs, various PICs, and so on.

...laura who actually owns a DragonBall development board

Surely...

[simonew]

...the kind of people that visit this site know the difference their 478s and their 939s?

Re:Surely...

[saderax]

My keen intuition informs me that the difference is precisely 461.

This is about sockets, not CPUs.

[Animats]

This isn't about architecture. It's just a one-page note about CPU chip sockets. Big deal.

Who picked the article title?

Authorship

[Stankatz]

"Doggie Fizzle writes[...]" No, Jason Kohrs wrote it. "Doggie Fizzle" copied and pasted it. I think the /. editors need to change their format a bit so as not to mislead readers about who writes these "summaries".

(And thanks in advance for moderating me "Troll" or "Offtopic" for pointing this out.)

Re:WOW!!!

[MyLongNickName]

Yes, this article was definitely beneath your level of understanding. However, I am sure there are others (like me) who aren't up on hardware like you. However, please don't disparage us.

At some point Cmdr Taco will put up an article about personal grooming. I promise not to make fun of it when the article introduces you to 'Shampoo' and 'Deoderant'.

Re:IBM? Apple???

[skiflyer]

And if you want to upgrade your Apple processor you either buy a new Apple or you go the Apple store and give them your information and buy a new chip.

This article is designed to inform the DYI consumer for whom your concerns don't really come into play as they're automatically handled by either the Apple hardware lock in.

Two is too many!

[SeaFox]

"Although there are currently only two main players in the CPU market, AMD and Intel, the number of choices is still enough to make the typical consumer's head spin."

Maybe this is why there's a near monolopy in operating systems, it's a good thing. Giving customers an actual choice seems to be enough to make their heads spin.

Re:WOW!!!

[MyLongNickName]

If you're going to insult somebody, at least learn how to spell 'Deodorant'. Moron.

Interesting analogy

[Zapraki]

Ok, this is somewhat OT, but I think it's the best "layman" description of processor improvement that I've ever read. This is from Clock Speed: Tell Me When it Hertz by H. Gilbert, Dec. 22, 2004. Available at http://pclt.cis.yale.edu/pclt/PCHW/clockidea.htm/

There are five ways to increase the processing power of a CPU or the teaching power of a High School.

Raise the clock speed - In the analogy, this corresponds to reducing the time available for each class period. If the teacher can talk faster, and if the students behave and listen more closely, this can work up to a point. Each student gets done with the school day earlier.

Build a Pipeline - A more complicated solution shortens the class period, but then breaks each subject into a sequence of steps. If it takes 45 minutes to cover Algebra, and that time cannot be reduced, then the subject could be covered in three consecutive 15 minute periods. A simpler subject might be covered in just one period. After all, there is no reason other than the convenience of scheduling why every every class for every subject lasts the same period of time. Students get done quicker, but only if some of the subjects are light weight.

Parallelism - Add more classrooms and more students. No one student learns anything faster, but at the end of the day the school has taught more people in the same amount of time. Of course, this only works if you have more students in the school district to teach.

Class Size - double the number of students in each classroom. High Schools don't like to do this. Computers, however, can easily switch from 32 to 64 bit operations. This will not effect most programs, but the particular applications that need processing power (games, multimedia) can be distributed in a 64 bit form to get more work done per operation.

Build a Second School - Sometime in '05 or '06 both Intel and AMD will begin to ship "multi-core" processor chips. This creates a system with two separate CPUs. An individual program won't run any faster, and if these chips have a slower clock may even run more slowly. However, two programs will be able to run at once, and programs that require the most performance (games, multimedia) can be written to use both CPUs at once.

Re:Interesting analogy

[Moonchen]

This analogy becomes even more appropriate if you include the explaination of "increasing the bus speed".

Re:IBM? Apple???

[curmudgeous]

I didn't RTFA, but I believe the intended audience are the do-it-yourselfers. PowerPC motherboards and processors are not generally available to the home market, and when you can find them they are prohibitively expensive, so there isn't much point in including them.

sorry, I couldn't resist!

[Thud457]

"On a day-to-day basis I run in to four kinds of CPUs:

1. x86 (typing this on one),
2. UltraSPARC (most of the boxes at work, plus an Ultra 5 I bought on EBay to play with),
3. ARM (my Palm - one of the new ones),
4. Power PC (stuff at work)
5. and several 68k derivatives (various boxes at work from little to seriously studly)

."

NOBODY EXPECTS THE SPANISH INQISITION!!!!!