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AMD Quad Cores, Oh My

Posted by timothy on from the just-right-kill dept.

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?"

3 of 423 comments (clear)

  1. Intel working on silicon laser to link cores by tbuckner · · Score: 5, Interesting

    See MIT Technology review article: http://www.technologyreview.com/articles/05/07/iss ue/feature_intel.asp The silicon laser, being made from the same material as the rest of the chip, would replace the copper wires that need to connect cores, thus letting Intel 'keep Moore's Law alive for decades', the article says. It would do this by permitting many, many cores in fast communication with less heat and less energy required than current copper-wired chips. Question: will Intel's possession of si-lasers shut AMD out?

  2. Re:more cores, more heat by rpozz · · Score: 3, Interesting

    There's another 'minor' issue that nobody else has mentioned yet. Regular Windows XP only supports up to 2 processors. This could cause some nasty issues between Microsoft and AMD.

  3. Re:MULTIthreading != Hyperthreading by Jeff+DeMaagd · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Hyperthreading isn't necessarily a kludge. It works very well and is often well worth the sliver of a die to implement, so long as the operating system knows the difference. It was never intended to be a replacement for a full dual processor system, I don't think it was ever sold as such.

    It isn't Intel's technology either, Intergraph invented it, although Hyperthreading (TM) is Intel's branding of the idea. Alphas were supposed to get it, maybe EV7 has it, I'm not sure, it might have been something suposed to go into EV8.