AMD Quad Cores, Oh My

Lullabye_Muse writes "From engadget we learn that AMD has plans for putting 4 cores on one die by the time Apple has fully gone to Intel processors. Full story here. They say they could eventually have up to 32 cores with scalable technology, but most programs haven't even got the ability to hyperthread, so do we really need the extra cores?"

Comments

Re:Doesn't have to be threads

[imsabbel]

You dont understand:
HYPERTHREADING =! MULTICORE.
These are 2 complete cpus+a crossbar switch on one die. No shareing of execution units/registers,no sharing of anything but the ram bandwith.

Amd dual core cpus are FASTER than 2 single core cpus in dual socket boards (with the exception of extremely bandwith demanding streaming applications) simply because of much faster on-die cache coherence communication.

A quad core cpu will most likely see more bandwith problems, but could (with ddr-2, ect) still be very well in the same class as a 4 single-core machine.