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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?"
You must be new here.
Of cores we do!
4 cores on one chip... I guess they will have to call it the earth simulator as the temprature of the chip will be reaching that of the earths core.
At least it will open up innovative new designs like built in coffee pot as well as new uses for old technology, like making pizza pops in your old cd burner.
flinging poop since 1969
Anything to go faster for Gentoo's sake, the better! Anything to make compiles go fast!
--
# Canmephians for a better Linux Kernel
$Stalag99{"URL"}="http://stalag99.net";
but most programs haven't even got the ability to hyperthread, so do we really need the extra cores?
Once upon a time, most programs didn't have the ability to do IEEE754 floating point either so did we really need the FPUs?
Once upon a time, most programs didn't have the ability to do 3D graphics at 30fps. Do we really need dedicated high performance graphics cards?
The list goes on... but no one learns...
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?
What we have here is a failure to communicate.
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.
HI O WISE PRINCE. WHT TOOK U SO DAM LONG?
" What does a developer have to do to take advantage of this?"
Easy use threads.
Multi-threaded code is very difficult to write correctly and debug. It's hardly 'easy'.
Multi threading is not all that hard. And yes I have written code that uses threads.
When, for a school project? There are very few cases where integrating a multi-threaded handler into a progrom doesn't introduce a formidable degree of complexity. What really needs to take root is a new programming paradigm. One that assumes all procedures, functions and system calls are designated as concurrent from the get-go. People smarter than most of us need to design a language/compiler that doesn't burden the programmer with the responsibility of 'keeping track' of when to use threads and when not to.
The government has a defect: it's potentially democratic. Corporations have no defect: they're pure tyrannies. -Chomsky
Second, most spyware is well written. Badly written spyware is ineffective -- by screwing up your system, it calls attention to itself, and encourages you to run a scan. Spyware and adware wouldn't have spread so thoroughly if it were all written by hacks.