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Intel Takes Quad Core To the Desktop
Rob writes to mention a Computer Business Review Online article about Intel's official launch of the Kentsfield chipset. Their Quad Core offering, Intel is claiming, is up to 80% faster than the dual-core Conroe released this past July. From the article: "Kentsfield, a 2.66GHz chip with a 1066MHz front-side bus, is more for computational-heavy usage, including digital content creation, engineering analysis, such as CAD, and actuarial and other financial applications. Steve Smith, director of operations for Intel digital enterprise group, claimed rendering is 58% faster for users building digital content creation systems, for video, photo editing or digital audio. In other words, Kentsfield is for high-end desktops or workstations only. For the average office worker who uses their PC for general productivity apps, such as communications and garden-variety computing, Smith recommended the Core 2 Duo from 'a price point and performance perspective.'"
"Core 2 Extreme quad-core QX6700" - There's a mouthful. It's funny that Intel is continually trying to downplay the importance of this chip for the average user. They say it's best for "more for computational-heavy usage, including digital content creation, engineering analysis, such as CAD" ... sounds like gamers would flock to this. Maybe they realize it's a rushed product (to beat AMD to the punch), and it will be in short supply?
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So how does Minesweeper run on it?
After Effects Rendering. Final Cut Pro HD Rendering. Maya Rendering. Video Compression [Rendering}. If you've ever done what they target this processor for, you'll COMPLETELY appreciate any time NOT spent watching the growbar work. Bring it on, I've been waiting to replace several G5s doing this all day, every day.
Most of the stuff on
What they need to do is make a Muti-Core NATIVE OS, so even single-thread apps can use more then 1 core
Other than jumping between cores to improve heat dissipation, how do you propose to make a highly serially-dependant algorithm run on more than one core at a time? Until computers can actually make programmers redundant by writing their own code given a high-level English description of the task (and even then, you'll still have some proveably-serial code), multithreading will remain at the whim of the programmers, not the scheduler.
also why dont they just make dual-core processors faster!
For the same reason they stopped the MHz-wars and moved to a core-war in the first place... Making each core faster has started to hit physical limits (power draw and heat dissipation, electron migration in progressively smaller transistors, clock speeds limited by the speed of light across the width of the chip, etc). Make no mistake, the speed will keep creeping up over time, but the end of 18-month speed doubling ended a few years ago. Major new improvements will either involve radical new technologies (and no, spintronics and diamond substrates will only yield incremental improvements) such as quantum, or what we see now, the move toward massive parallelism.
seems the only way we are going to get ahead in the field
Gaming, while interesting, does not drive research into the highest end of computing.
It's going like razorblades - the razorblade companies just try to outdo each other on how many blades that can be placed in a single razor. At this rate, expect as many processors as you can physically fit on, plus an extra processor for those tricky, hard to reach programs.
since I am a journalist for a computer rag.
I will say "lucky bastard", but that also explains your follow-up comment:
Applications can barely use two cores properly, and games are still not as SMP aware as they should.
Although apps and games have started to improve their multithreading, you don't get multi-core for single-app performance. You get it so you can play a modern FPS at the same time you have DVD Shrink backing up a movie for you, with little to no slowdown to either. With a quad core, you can add in two more CPU sucking tasks, again with little to no slowdown (though currently, memory needs to catch up to task of dealing with more cores).
Six(ish) years ago, I got my first dual CPU machine. Almost nothing except the OS itself ran multithreaded at that time. And the improved performance of the machine just blew me away - Only last year did I eventually decommission that ancient dual CPU box because modern single-CPU speeds had passed it (and I still would have held out, except for the knowledge that I could do an in-place upgrade to a dual-core CPU whenever I wanted to).
So you may not see the point of multi-cores, when your favorite game won't run any faster on four than on one. But that doesn't even come close to meaning that "most" people won't benefit. Quite the opposite, I'd say that only hard-core gamers wouldn't benefit. Everyone else will feel the improved responsiveness the first time they touch a multi-core box.
What? I thought EVERYONE used WinDVR to encode MPEG2 files of Battlestar Gallactica from their TIVO while playing F.E.A.R., and turn it into H262 for uploading as a a killer torrent while kicking but in Call of Duty 2? I suck the life out of an X2 4400 bitch, and I am NOT alone.
We cant all have a life, so I NEED that chip!
You insensitive clod!!!
You want to know what consumers want?? cheaper.
They are happy with their new Dell 1.8ghz pentium M laptops and that horribly oudated and incredibly slow P4-1.8ghz processor they bought 3 years ago.
Consumers are happy now. computers have stagnated hard for the past 3-4 years and the performance gains offered by this new stuff is only marginal for them.
On video editing, I can see the advances IF your app can take advantage of it, problem is current apps cant take full advantage of that processor until a new build or version is made to take advantages of it.
The consumer yawns and happily uses their old 3 year old PC or that cheapie from dell that cost them $299 with flat panel and is as slow. They dont care about 64 bit, dual or quad core.
at least until they buy a new OS and discover that the added bloat requires more processing power to display menus and movethe mouse cursor.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Faster, good... Wider, good... But why not parallel with dual-DMA? Right now, it seems you could have 10 cores, but if all the threads running on each core have to contend for 1 bus, it doesn't matter how fast the bus is. I want each core to be able to access its own memory so it is not blocked by the other core's if it is accessing memory. I want one core to be able to access my NIC while the other accesses the hard drive and the other access the video card. All this requires some sort of parallel bus setup. It is my understanding we have not done this sort of architecture yet, but if we keep increasing the number of processor cores, this would seem to be the next step. BUT, I am not a hardware guy. I am a software guy, and expect it all to just work! :)
They don't care how much power the chip consumes or how much heat it dissipates,
Oh really? Now I can't say as far as Intel, but AMD has been very focused on power consumption for a very long time now. All of their literature is filled with benchmarks of power-per-watt and total power savings in the data center, etc. If AMD doesn't care about power consumption, then why would they specifically go to pains to offer CPU versions that are even MORE aggressive in their power saving if you pay a bit more for them? And with all of their power saving innovation and dedication what do they get? Intel now outperforms them and everyone jumps the ship and goes over to the Intel side (despite the fact that the lower power versions of AMD's CPU still use less power when the final weight with the chipset is done).
You know why they care about what performance the average consumer sees? Because that's all consumers care about. If it were otherwise you wouldn't be seeing your lights dim when your graphics card goes into high gear. Where are the "power conscious" versions of these graphics cores?
I've got a lot of Athons, and Athlon XP's running where I work. Some burn out but that's often because of their environment and due to the fact that the fan that comes with the heatsink for the OEM version is garbage almost guaranteed to burn out after a year in high dust environments. The Pentium 4 is history, even Intel admits it was on the wrong track. If you want more longevity, then get a robust heatsink fan (undervolted) and underclock your CPU. You DO underclock your CPU right?