Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Quad Core Chips From Intel and AMD

Posted by Zonk on from the more-is-better dept.

lubricated writes "According to the San Fransisco Chronicle, in an effort to one-up AMD, Intel will be coming out with 4 core cpu's in 2007." From the article: "Chips with two cores have been the latest rage, with both Intel and AMD selling those microprocessors as their high-end offering. Apple Computer Inc.'s new iMac, which started selling last month, uses the dual-core chip ... Not to be outdone, Randy Allen, AMD's corporate vice president of server and workstation division, said Friday that his firm is working its own quad-core processor for release next year."

3 of 412 comments (clear)

  1. I'm not sure it's a good path. by jd · · Score: 0, Offtopic
    It would seem to make more sense to have 4 virtual cores, where all have access to all computing elements. That way, you don't put such tight limits on the hyperthreading (where that would be beneficial). It would also be much easier to add more virtual cores, as it would not require any additional physical computing elements, so massive parallelization in cases where very different behind-the-scenes work would be needed would benefit further.


    (Here, I'm using the term "virtual core" to mean a complete physical set of internal registers for each "core", but with no directly attached computing elements. Hence it is not a physical CPU, as it doesn't process, it's not central and it's distributed rather than being a unit. If you had a memory pool for such a purpose, where what was left was available as L1 cache, you could dynamically change the number of cores to suit the work you were doing. That would seem to be the "ultimate" design.)

    --
    It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
  2. new imac owner by DarkClown · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    posting this from the 2 ghz imac bought a couple weeks ago - i haven't had hardly problem at all since getting this (except for wish more apps were universal binaries).
    the 'rosetta' apps actually do run faster than they did on my old 733 mhz g4, but when i found a new firefox build (beta) and replaced it and got tot a/b the difference it was really shocking - this system shines bright.

  3. Re:The new race by 4D6963 · · Score: 1, Offtopic

    What.. are.. you.. talking.. about?

    --
    You just got troll'd!