Into the Core - Intel's New Core CPU

Tyler Too writes "Hannibal over at Ars Technica has an in-depth look at Intel's new Core processors. From the article: 'In a time when an increasing number of processors are moving away from out-of-order execution (OOOE, or sometimes just OOO) toward in-order, more VLIW-like designs that rely heavily on multithreading and compiler/coder smarts for their performance, Core is as full-throated an affirmation of the ongoing importance of OOOE as you can get.'"

Comments

AMD Vs Intel: Round 8

[eldavojohn]

Ok, so I know I'm going to get a lot of AMD people agreeing with me and a lot of Intel people outright ripping me to shreds. But I'm going to speak my thoughts come hell or high water and you can choose to be a yes-man (or woman) with nothing to add to the conversation or just beat me with a stick.

I believe that AMD had this technology before Intel ever started in on it. Yes, I know it wasn't really commercially available on PCs but it was there. And I would also like to point out a nifty little agreement between IBM and AMD that certainly gives them aid in the development of chips. Let's face it, IBM's got research money coming out of their ears and I'm glad to see AMD benefit off it and vice versa. I think that these two points alone show that AMD has had more time to refine the multicore technology and deliver a superior product.

As a disclaimer, I cannot say I've had the ability to try an Intel dual core but I'm just ever so happy with my AMD processor that I don't see why I should.

There's a nice little chart in the article but I like AMD's explanation along with their pdf a bit better. As you can see, AMD is no longer too concerned with dual core but has moved on to targeting multi core.

Do I want to see Intel evaporate? No way. I want to see these two companies go head to head and drive prices down. You may mistake me for an AMD fanboi but I simply was in agony in high school when Pentium 100s costed an arm and a leg. Then AMD slowly climbed the ranks to be a major competitor with Intel--and thank god for that! Now Intel actually has to price their chips competitively and I never want that to change. I will now support the underdog even if Intel drops below AMD just to insure stiff competition. You can call me a young idealist about capitalism!

I understand this article also tackles execution types and I must admit I'm not too up to speed on that. It's entirely possible that OOOE could beat out the execution scheme that AMD has going but I wouldn't know enough to comment on it. I remember that there used to be a lot of buzz about IA-64's OOOE processing used on Itanium. But I'm not sure that was too popular among programmers.

The article presents a compelling argument for OOOE. And I think that with a tri-core or higher processor, we could really start to see a big increase in sales using OOOE. Think about it, a lot of IA-64 code comes to a point where the instruction stalls as it waits for data to be computed (most cases, a branch). If there are enough cores to compute both branches from the conditional (and third core to evaluate the conditional) then where is the slowdown? This will only break down on a switch style statement or when several if-thens follow each other successively.

In any case, it's going to be a while before I switch back to Intel. AMD has won me over for the time being.

Re:AMD Vs Intel: Round 8

[DesertWolf0132]

As you fear a beating from the Intel side after what I say I fear I will receive a beating from both.

In my personal experience the AMD chips have been the fastest systems I have ever owned. My problem with them is the boards made for them (this is personal experience only) tend to become unstable after a couple of years. Intel boards, in my experience, stay stable longer.

For example, I have two 5 year old systems, one with a Gigabyte AMD Athlon board, and one with a true Intel P3 board. Both run Slackware. Both have insane cooling so the board temps never go over 100 degrees. The Athlon board system will occasionally reboot for no reason. The Intel board system has run for months without ever needing to be touched. The last time I brought it down was for a power outage that lasted longer than the battery on my UPS. I have tested everything on the Athlon system. The power supply is solid, the hard drive is new and the second one I have installed, none of the controllers test bad, and while it is running nothing tests bad using diagnostics. Then it suddenly reboots.

One would think this an isolated incident but I have build 6 Athlon systems in the last 5 years for friends and only two are still stable. All of the Intel systems I have built with true Intel boards in the last 15 years are still running including a 486 DX/2 66. I know this is personal experience only and not a good enough sample to make any real judgement but as for me, I pick Intel. That said, I believe the problems I have had with AMD come from the fact that none of the boards are made by AMD. If AMD made a board up to the same standards as its CPU I believe my opinion would change in a heartbeat.

You may commence my flogging now...

Re:AMD Vs Intel: Round 8

[evilviper]

If Intel comes out with a better, cheaper processor tomorrow, don't buy the AMD one, buy the intel one. Their is no point treating a company like a person.

Clearly you've never heard of a boycott, picket, or any other similar form of consumer revolt.

and this is why...

[escay]

overheard at the intel core processor design lab:

"Brian, there's a message in my cereal! it says OOO..."

Re:Article summary

[Hannibal_Ars]

"Hoisting of loads from an unknown address is now performed more speculatively than it used to be, at the cost of some complexity in the retirement unit."

I think you mean, "hoisting of loads above a /store to/ an unknown address." If you're going to pretend to school little old clueless me about the complexities of memory reordering and retirement then at least learn the difference between a load and a store.