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.

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:Surely...

[saderax]

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

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.