AMD Unveils Barcelona Quad-Core Details

mikemuch writes, "At today's Microprocessor Forum, Intel's Ben Sander laid out architecture details of the number-two CPU maker's upcoming quad-core Opterons. The processors will feature sped-up floating-point operations, improvements to IPC, more memory bandwidth, and improved power management. In his analysis on ExtremeTech, Loyd Case considers that the shift isn't as major as Intel's move from NetBurst to Core 2, but AMD claims that its quad core is true quad core, while Intel's is two dual-cores grafted together."

Comments

Once again...

[tygerstripes]

Firstly, can I just say that stating that "the shift isn't as major as Intel's move from NetBurst to Core 2" is like... er... comparing a decent incremental car improvement with swapping a bicylce for a car. Or something. I'm not saying Core2Duo isn't great tech, but look; Netburst was shit. Everyone knows it. They flogged that horse for far too long, so comparing on the grounds of the proportional improvement is not a useful comment. It's like when the thick kid in school got the "most improved" award, and everyone sat there and went "Well yeah, but what was his alternative?".

As for the quad-core thing, it's the same story all over again. Intel rush out a solder-together-two-chips job to beat the competition to market, and then the actual innovators come out with something coherent that works more efficiently etc.

I'm not saying the AMD will necessarily be better. What I'm saying is I don't care who gets to market 2 months earlier. I want the better chip, and I can live with the mystery for a few weeks.

Although, frankly, I can barely afford to eat having just built a decent Core2Duo rig, so I won't be investing either way just yet...

Note to AMD: We don't care

[cperciva]

AMD claims that its quad core is true quad core, while Intel's is two dual-cores grafted together

Note to AMD: We don't care about the implementation details. We care about performance, cost, and power consumption; the clock speed, cache sizes, and how cores talk to each other is irrelevant.

For all I care, Intel's "quad core" processor could be using a team of psychic circus midgets.

Re:Note to AMD: We don't care

[Visaris]

Note to AMD: We don't care about the implementation details. We care about performance, cost, and power consumption; the clock speed, cache sizes, and how cores talk to each other is irrelevant.

AMD it taking the route that will give better performance. I hear you saying that soldering some copper pipes with rubber-bands would be fine as long as it would perform. The point is that it will work... just not very well.

If you don't think I'm right, look at Intel's own product roadmap. They plan to release a new version of Kentsfield that has all four cores on one peice of Si, with a shared cache, just like AMD is about to do... only later in 2007 after AMD's version comes out. When the two major chip companies move in the same direction, usually that means it is the right one. The only difference is that AMD is going to get there sooner because they didn't bother to play around with this MCM (Multi-Chip-Module) junk. Intel just wants to get to market first; they don't seem to put quality first.