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Intel Reveals Next-Gen CPUs
EconolineCrush writes "Intel has revealed its next generation CPU architecture at the Intel Developer Forum. The new architecture will be shared by 'Conroe' desktop, 'Merom' mobile, and 'Woodcrest' server processors, all of which were demoed by Intel CEO Paul Otellini. Rather than chasing clock speeds, Intel is focusing on lowering power consumption with its new architecture. Otellini claimed that Conroe will offer five times the performance per watt of the company's current desktop chips. He also ran the entire keynote presentation on a Merom laptop, and demoed Conroe on a system running Linux."
Rather than chasing clock speeds, Intel is focusing on lowering power consumption with its new architecture.
Exactly what we've all been waiting for. Is Intel Good(tm) now?
The Digital Couture Collection
Ok, Conroe appears to be a lake in Texas, Merom is a bluff near the Wabash river in Indiana...where/what was the inspiration for Woodcrest?
So instead of clock speed how about execution speed of standard benchmarks on a reference machine? Or would that show how much they suck per dollar next to AMD?
Does anybody know what instruction set these three new processors implement? The article states that these are 64-bit CPUs, but doesn't say whether they feature the AMD64 or the Itanium instruction set.
John Sauter (J_Sauter@Empire.Net)
Fundamentally, most markets of any age undergo specialization, niches form, and those most fitted to the niches, do best. But having a unified architecture between server / laptop / desktop flies in the face of that; it either claims there is no niche market anywhere, or that there is a "killer chip" which fits all niches better than anything else.
Now, I can guess what Intel would choose of those options, but is there something about the chip industry that makes it immune to this specialization idea? What am I missing?
In Soviet Russia, us are belong to all your base.
The screenshots make it look like Intel isn't including HT with this next gen core. Is that because it's likely the pipeline is shorter? I thought it would be uber-cool to have a dual-core CPU with HT for some awesome synthetic 4-core action. But, I guess the real question is: Should I care about HT anymore?
The problem is that the physics for how to increase the number of transistors on a chunk of silicon is very well understood and the physics of how to make better batteries is not.
To double the number of transistors on a processor is primarily a matter of lithography, that is etchich smaller and smaller lines into an existing wafer. Same materials, more or less, and same technique, more or less. With batteries, it's far more hit and miss.
The technology and fabrication process to make a lead-acid battery is vastly different than NiCd. NiMh is somewhat similar to NiCd, but then Lithium Ion is rather different and requires a lot more technology to make it work. Then you've got fuel cells as a possibility, and that's vastly different from anything I just described.
There's a lot of effort being put into battery research because everybody understands what a fundamental limitiation it is to everybody's dreams of pervasive wireless. It's rather ironic to describe these internet coffee shops as having "wireless" when you still have to have A/C power to do anything. The problem is that it does not have the clear and obvious path that CPU's have had.
I expect that fuel cells will eventually be the way to go. Still there's a certain inconvenience in them. If I want to charge my laptop batteries, i just plug in my laptop. If I've got a fuel cell, do I have to buy numerous cells? Do I have to fill them up with methanol, etc? It doesn't seem like there's a panacea for portable power (and other p words) anytime soon.
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I have to wonder if Intel basically ditching the last 5 years of CPU development in favor of their Israeli skunkworks ranks at or above the famous Microsoft IE U-turn?
I mean, Intel sold millions and spent billions on Netbu(r|)st, and hit the wall far before the 5+ghz figures bandied about back in the day. This is basically ctrl-alt-del on a large part of their roadmap, though I'm sure they'll still be selling 'traditional' P4s for awhile.
While it's not a perfect metric, it is very useful for some very important target markets. Some companies crunch numbers continuously for profit. They have datacenters filled with thousands upon thousands of Opterons or Xeons or what-have-you. The battles they are fighting (in terms of maximizing their profits) are all about power/heat density (how many GFlops can I cram into X square feet of datacenter space and still be able to supply the proper power and cooling), and performance per watt (for every $100,000 I spend on electric bills running this datacenter, how many calculations can I complete?).
11*43+456^2
So much for that nonsense about increasing CPU performance
:)
First the OB-peeve: Moore's Law has nothing to do with clock speed or relative performance, only that the number of transistors per unit of area will double every X months (where X lies between 12 and 18, depending on which "version" of his law you use).
Okay, that taken care of...
AMD and Intel hit a barrier "harder" than the mere doubling of transistors... They reached a point where running a PC noticeably increases the electric bill (a typical single-core P4 costs around $1.50 per month to run 24/7 in the Northeastern US, just for the CPU, not counting the graphics card, monitor, hair dryer, or whatever other power-sucking toys you might have attached); and relatedly, that high density of power consumption requires getting rid of a proportional amount of heat.
By dropping the energy requirements by a fifth, you can consequently have five times as many cores for the same heat-dissipating capacity. If each of those pushes a mere half the numerical performance of the single power-hungry core, you still get a net gain of 1.5 units of processing per unit of area.