Dell Set to Introduce AMD's Triple-core Phenom CPU

An anonymous reader writes "AMD is set to launch what is considered its most important product against Intel's Core 2 Duo processors next week. TG Daily reports that the triple-core Phenoms — quad-core CPUs with one disabled core — will be launching on February 19. Oddly enough, the first company expected to announce systems with triple-core Phenoms will be Dell. Yes, that is the same company that was rumored to be dropping AMD just a few weeks ago. Now we are waiting for the hardware review sites to tell us whether three cores are actually better than two in real world applications and not just in marketing."

Comments

You know what would be even better?

[LaskoVortex]

Enable that other core!

Re:You know what would be even better?

[Azh Nazg]

It allows them to sell chips with one of the cores broken, thereby getting higher yields from their production lines.

Re:You know what would be even better?

[jericho4.0]

Chip yields. A significant number of the 4 ways have a defect rendering one core useless. For the same reason, the Cell is speced with 8 SPEs, but the PS3 ships with 7.

Re:You know what would be even better?

[Anonymous Coward]

lol. Please get fatally hit by a crashing roflcopter so we don't have to listen to this kind of shit.

Re:You know what would be even better?

[LaskoVortex]

Ah, yes. This makes great sense, but the announcement should have read "one of the cores defective", which would be more correct. The word disabled suggests purposeful disabling, which is misleading--but perhaps the announcement was a victim of marketing language chicanery.

Re:You know what would be even better?

[Wesley Felter]

In multicore systems each core can only talk to two other cores.
With a quad core system, each core cant directly talk to the core diagonal to it which slows things down. That's not correct. In the Phenom, all four cores are connected to the crossbar and can communicate equally.

Re:You know what would be even better?

[omeomi]

But when you think about it, there's a lot of times when a triple core will be "faster" than a quad core.

Like modeling the behavior of triple-core computers, for instance...

Re:You know what would be even better?

[edwdig]

If the demand for triple core processors is higher than the supply of quad core processors with one defective core, then AMD could disable a working core on the quad core chips to ensure supply.

Happens all the time in graphics cards. The main difference between different model numbers in the same line is the number of pipelines on the GPU. Top end cards have them all enabled, lower models progressively less. Often the lower end cards will have working pipelines disabled.

Re:You know what would be even better?

[Anonymous Coward]

Ah, yes. This makes great sense, but the announcement should have read "one of the cores defective", which would be more correct. The word disabled suggests purposeful disabling, which is misleading--but perhaps the announcement was a victim of marketing language chicanery. So... They disable the defective one. How is this misleading? Other companies do it too -- HDD makers sell bigger HDDs as smaller ones when they fail QA testing, for example.

Seriously, if the price difference is enough to make buying one of these "tricores" worth it, and more importantly, if these Dells allow me to throw in a "real" Phenom aftermarket (or even ship with the option to buy a true quad-core Phenom...) well, more power to them.

Not only that, AMD seriously wins in this -- they sell these (likely Dell Precision Workstations and/or Dell XPSes) with their "tri" core CPUs, as well as -- I would wager -- their Quad Core CPUs as an upgrade, and they'll start to finally make some inroads with them. So far the impression I've gotten is that both Intel and AMD's quad core offerings have been kinda DOA with consumers (as opposed to the enterprise). But then again, I typically work with office workstations (Optiplex, PWS, etc).

Ob-Full Disclosure: I work for Dell as a Prosupport Tech Support Agent.

Re:You know what would be even better?

[thefear]

But very few programs can handle 3 cores. That's because for programmers, tasks and data and everything really just doesn't divide very well by uneven numbers like 3. So most programs will use 2 of the 3 cores. I have a feeling that you don't understand how cpu scheduling works.

Re:You know what would be even better?

[dbIII]

Had that sort of thing with the Intel Celeron 300 A (with a stargate sort of A symbol). There was not enough supply so they were rebadging sweet 450MHz symmetric multiprocessor capable Pentium II processors as the cheaper Celeron - just the thing for a two CPU socket board. It made it possible to have a fast two CPU system for about the same price as a fast single CPU system with Pentium II on the label.

The distinguishing feature is often the number of tests done to certify the hardware and in some cases it is not a failure in a certain test but that the test required for the higher spec was not done at all. The rumor with the Celeron mentioned above was that they were rebadged after passing all the tests required for the Pentium II 450 spec but there were a lot of them in storage and more Celeron 300's were required - so they got the "A and circle" symbol to distinguish them from the other Celeron 300's.

Re:You know what would be even better?

[Swoopy]

This used to happen even in the 486 days already.
486es with a working co-processor (Floating Point Unit) were sold as "DX" models, the ones where it was broken were sold as "SX".
Even better, it allowed a market for FPU co-pro upgrades where one would install a co-processor upgrade alongside their 486SX later on.
Once production yields improved, this practice was continued for a while maintaining a market for both "SX" and "DX" models, where the "SX" models would have their FPU deliberately disabled. What on earth moved AMD and Intel not to simply start selling the "DX" processors at a pricepoint closer to the "SX" ones, I don't know.

The DRAM market has been much the same for even longer. The ZX Spectrum (Timex in U.S.) 48K model had in fact 80K of possible RAM on board. The first 8K were a sort of memory swapping / paging bank, and the remaining 40K actually consisted of DRAM chips where only half of the chip worked, which were cheaper than even the half-size but fully working ones. Replace those DRAM chips with fully working full-size ones and you'd have a whopping 80k in your computer.
(This post outs me as a dinosaur fossil, doesn't it? :-( )

Re:You know what would be even better?

[ScriptedReplay]

But when you think about it, there's a lot of times when a triple core will be "faster" than a quad core.

Particularly, and gloriously so, when the quad-core system is not powered on.

Re:You know what would be even better?

[GreatBunzinni]

You've just demonstrated that you don't have a clue about how an application is ran, let alone how an operating system manages the running processes. For starters, you keep on blabbering about "programs handling cores". That does not have any basis on reality, as the only "program" that can be stated that handles "cores" is the operating system. That's all. The remaining programs that the operating system executes may spawn processes and may be multi-threaded but they do not nor they can handle "cores". At all.

Moreover, even if a certain program, running on a 4-core system, generates 4 processes or threads, you still cannot claim that that particular program "handles 4 cores". It is up to the operating system to manage the system's resources, including where and how a process is ran. It might even run all the 4 processes or threads in the same core.

Another silly thing that you imply which is clearly wrong is that a user can only take advantage of the multiple cores in a system if that user happens to run applications which spawn as many processes or threads as the number of cores. That is just plain wrong. The operating system manages the execution of all the system's processes and threads, which means that it distributes the execution of those processes and threads through all the available processing cores. So, if you run 4 separate applications (single-process/threaded) on a decent operating system running on a 4 processing core system then the operating system may end up executing those 4 separate applications in the 4 separate processing cores. As any desktop computer is running at any given time more than 20 different processes (single or multi-threaded) then the advantage of having more processing cores on your system is rather obvious.

But hey, don't let logic and concrete knowledge on the issue get in the way of your judgement.

Re:You know what would be even better?

[SpinyNorman]

I think more fundamentaly he doesn't realize that thread != core (i.e. that a three, or 42 for that matter, thread program can run on an N-core CPU, where N = 1, 2, 3, 4, ....). Number of cores just means how much genuine parallelism may be occuring at run time.

His claim thay threads are useful in powers of two is of course complete junk since threads are usually used one at a time for specific tasks (data aquisition thread, rendering thread, etc), or in groups (maybe of run-time configurable size) to provide thread pools for specific tasks - e.g. server threads.

Let's not forget also that the OS itself will be competing with whatever application(s) you are running for the CPU, so even a single single-threaded program will benefit from a multi-core CPU by way of not having to compete with the OS as much for the CPU cores.

Re:You know what would be even better?

[drinkypoo]

The word disabled suggests purposeful disabling, which is misleading--but perhaps the announcement was a victim of marketing language chicanery.

Or perhaps you're just not comprehending the semantics here. It was purposeful disabling, to avoid problems with a problem core (or maybe they're just having thermal problems, for all we know.) The cores don't disable themselves. Thus it was disabled to deal with the problem of a defect.

It's not any more misleading than telling you that one Cell SPE is disabled on every PS3.

Re:You know what would be even better?

[jp102235]

ok, I am an IC test engineer:

#1: you do test these chips before the saw step (chopping the wafer up into individual die)
#2: its hard to predict speeds/vcc/temp sensitive yields at that stage, but you do test all the die and usually check for full functionality (as much as the test coverage allows)
#3: once packaged, the chips are "binned" to functional fails, speed grades. etc, and are tested at temp, vcc limits for speed sorting. so you could have 1 core that fails at 30C with a high vcc, but the others are ok (this is should be rare since they all sit together on the wafer in close proximity, and thus shouldn't vary much from each other)
#4: nanoscopic defects occur and could take out one or two of the die. It would be advantageous to bin this out as a tri/dual core.
#5: I am 100% sure that if these become popular, there will be some chips that pass all tests fully, but have one core disabled. happens all the time.

JP

Yield, effectiveness

[Sparr0]

Making 3-core machines out of 4-core CPUs will do wonders for their yield. So many chips get trashed because of single tiny failures, this will allow them to keep any chip with any number of failures as long as they are limited to just one of the cores. The same sort of benefit Intel saw by using Pentiums with bad cache segments to make Celerons, or nVidia saw when disabling (supposedly) bad pipelines to turn 16-pipe GPUs into cheaper 12-pipe versions.

I am sure some units will make it through the process with a functional-enough fourth core to be useful to "overclockers", but I think the majority will have actual problems. That is, unless there is no 4-working-core version of this processor for the known-working ones to be sold as?

One concern... How do they keep thermal load even if 1/4 of the die is not running?

Re:Yield, effectiveness

[MiniMike]

> One concern... How do they keep thermal load even if 1/4 of the die is not running?

If running Windows, the OS will cycle through the cores so 3 are always running, and one is cooling. This will usually not cause a problem before the system crashes due to something else.

For other OSes, I would think that the conductive layers over the non-functional core would still be working, and capable of distributing the heat evenly. Same problem as when 1 core is running full tilt and (1, 2, 3 for dual, triple, and quad core) are idling.

Re:Yield, effectiveness

[Sparr0]

OK, perhaps I am mis-educated regarding this particular device, but I expect that one of the four cores will be defective on almost every Phenom CPU. That means cycling through them would not be an option.

Re:Yield, effectiveness

[mr_matticus]

Why?

If one is disabled, it would cycle 1,2,4,1,2,4 (assuming #3 is the bad one).

Moreover, if one of the cores isn't running, and you have a cooling system designed for four cores, it really doesn't matter. If it can handle four full-tilt cores, it can handle three. The zero heat production is a bigger benefit than a slightly uneven distribution. If it's truly a suitable medium, the heat generated will be spread throughout pretty well, even if the heat-production is only on one edge of the medium. Think of an electric stove burner--it only has heat applied at one end, but the opposite end heats up pretty well. Obviously it's not perfect, but it doesn't need to be.

Licensing?

[kermit1221]

So, does one have to purchase 1.5 Vista licenses?

No

[Sycraft-fu]

Microsoft has declared for all their products that a processor is defined as a physical processor in one socket. No matter how many cores it has, it is a single CPU for licensing purposes. Also you don't have to buy more licenses to run more processors, you have to buy different versions. Last I checked it was 2 processors for workstation versions, 4 for server, 8 for advanced server and 32 for datacentre. Not sure if that's changed.

At work we have purchased a dual processor system with a quad core CPU in each that runs Vista. All 8 cores show up and are usable by software.

Shick

[Anonymous Coward]

Works for razors - 2 is better than 1, so 3 has got to be better than 2. I'm not switching from Intel until someone comes out with 5 - count 'em, 5! - micro sharp cores...

Re:I've been away from IT for very long

[solafide]

When Dell bought Alienware (who used AMD CPUs) Dell began using AMD.

There's no need to wait for any reviews

[Sycraft-fu]

3 cores will be better if you have a use for them. It's that simple. That answer will hold true for any arbitrary number of cores. Basically you need to have a number of threads equal to or greater than your number of cores that each need a lot of CPU time. This could all be from one program that's heavily multi-threaded and CPU intensive, or it could be from multiple applications running at the same time.

For most things, no 3 cores isn't really going to be much benefit at this point. While there are now multithreaded games out there that make use of 2 cores pretty well, they don't really scale past that at this point. I imagine that'll change as time goes on since quad core processors are getting more common, but it hasn't yet. As for desktop apps, well they don't tend to use much power so it won't help much. I suppose it might help responsiveness in some cases a tiny bit, but I doubt it.

However for some professional apps it can help. Cakewalk's Sonar makes use of multiple processors quite handily. Every effect plugin, every instrument, all run as a separate thread so it can easily use a large number of cores. I've seen it run on a quad core system and it distributes load quite well across them. I don't imagine anything would be different with 3 cores, it'd just have one less to use.

The AMD Triple Track

[fahrbot-bot]

The AMD Triple Track has three cores - one core to cut into the problem, a second to grab what is left before it can snap back into the cache, and a third core to finish it off. The AMD Triple Track, because you'll believe anything!

[For those too young, the reference is the 1975 SNL parody about the Remco Triple Track Razor - done just after twin-bladed razors first appeared.]

The advantage of dual-core...

[SanityInAnarchy]

Ironically, the main advantage of dual-core has nothing to do with applications taking advantage of that second core -- in fact, just the opposite.

Dual-core means that for most cases, I can run a video encode, a backup/compression process, a long-ish compilation (of the sort that doesn't like 'make -j2'), etc -- not so much all at once, as I can fire off any background process and not worry about it, as I have a whole other core to use. It's shameful -- Amarok will occasionally use 100% of one core, and I won't notice for hours.

Having more than two cores wouldn't benefit me a lot right now. I wouldn't mind it, certainly -- I've been playing a bit with things like Erlang, which should be able to scale arbitrarily -- but I think the real applications are only just catching on to the idea that threading is a good thing. I imagine it's still going to be a lot longer till a quad-core machine is useful for anything other than, say, running virtual machines, as most programming languages do not make threading easy. (Locks and semaphores are almost as bad as manual memory management.)

While I'm playing crystal ball, I'll predict that the first application of multicore will be things which were already running on multiple machines in the first place -- video rendering, for instance. Not encoding, rendering.

The second application for it will be gaming. This will take longer, and will only be the larger, higher-quality engines, who will simply throw manpower at the problem of squeezing the most out of whatever hardware is available.

I suspect that the old pattern will be very much in effect, though -- wherein gamers will buy a three-core system and unlock the fourth one (if possible), then use maybe one core, probably half of one, with the video card still being the most important purchase. If there's a perceptible improvement, it'll be because their spyware, IM, torrents, leftover Firefox with 20 MySpace pages and flash ads, etc, won't be able to quite fill the other three cores.

I'd like to add that for most people, including me, one core is plenty if you know how to manage your processes properly -- set priorities, kill Amarok when it gets stuck in that infinite loop, and get off my lawn!

Re:The advantage of dual-core...

[Kuciwalker]

Having more than two cores wouldn't benefit me a lot right now. I wouldn't mind it, certainly -- I've been playing a bit with things like Erlang, which should be able to scale arbitrarily -- but I think the real applications are only just catching on to the idea that threading is a good thing. I imagine it's still going to be a lot longer till a quad-core machine is useful for anything other than, say, running virtual machines, as most programming languages do not make threading easy. (Locks and semaphores are almost as bad as manual memory management.)

In general I'd agree with you, but I've found that a quad-core (which is actually pretty cheap these days) is much better than a dual-core if you watch HD video. h264 at 1080p is pretty taxing on the processor, and on a C2D you generally can't have anything in the background or you'll drop frames. A quad-core means you can run one or two other processor-intensive tasks (usually as you said, video encoding/backup/compilation type stuff) and don't have to pause them when you want to watch video. Also, it's very helpful if you use Mathematica a lot for large computations.

software compatability?

[Doppler00]

I think I remember reading an article on Tomshardwareguide where they tried running one dual core, and a single core CPU in the same system for 3 cores. While they got it to boot the OS, a lot of applications failed to run.

I'm guessing there is a lot of code out there that's looking for power of 2 number of cores. A program might run fine with 1,2,4,8, or 16 cores, but if you do some kind of odd number I wouldn't be surprised if several applications just refused to run. It will be interesting to see what kind of compatibility testing AMD has done with this new processor.

In the end though, this just seems like another last ditch attempt by AMD to marginally compete on the lower end market with Intel. Intel says they have no need for 3 core chips since their yields are so much higher.

Re:software compatability?

[flyingfsck]

That may well be true with DOS or Windows ME, but certainly not with any version of Unix.

What's "defective" about them?

[Joce640k]

You're sold a three core chip, it has three working cores.

Which part of that is "defective", misleading, or unfit for purpose?

How many dual core chips are really four core chips with two failed cores? Do you know? Face it, it's just the number three which bugs you, and that's pretty childish...

There is a known problem with current Phenom...

[ELiTeUI]

There are a couple known problems with the first spin of the Phenom die (codename Agena).

The first (and less relevant) problem is the TLB errata. The second (and more relevant to this discussion), is a problem in which core #2 (out of [0,1,2,3]) is lower yielding than the first three. For example, on the same CPU die, cores [0,1,3] may work fine at 2.6Ghz, but core [2] yields only at 2.0GHz. This is a widespread problem, mostly found out through failed overclocking attempts.

Google it yourself and find out..

Re:I don't imagine they'll allow it

[91degrees]

I believe they're designed with the idea of disabling a core afterwards, using fusable tracks. Apply a high voltage to the right pins and part of the chip breaks.

God, Dell is NOT dropping AMD

[WarlockD]

I hate it when people tell me this. They have dropped WAY to much effort into the whole 6950 and SC1435 lines. Hell, the new 2970's are out if not already.

My personal opinion is that they still need to be fleshed out though. I am not sure why, but all the AMD systems we have only accept DDR2 unbuffered as well has having issues with very large amounts of ram ( More than 64gigs). I will admit however, they use ALLOT less power and much quieter.

Obligatory Onion Article

[SirSlud]

Just making sure your references are noted ;)

We're doing five cores

[symbolset]

For reference, see The Onion reference, "... We're doing five blades". (Rough language. If you're at a school maybe NSFW). From February, 2004. For the record, the Gillette Fusion with five blades and two lubricating strips was introduced in early 2006.

Hilarious though:

Here's the report from Engineering. Someone put it in the bathroom: I want to wipe my a?? with it. They don't tell me what to invent--I tell them. And I'm telling them to stick two more blades in there. I don't care how. Make the blades so thin they're invisible. Put some on the handle. I don't care if they have to cram the fifth blade in perpendicular to the other four, just do it!

You're taking the "safety" part of "safety razor" too literally, grandma. Cut the strings and soar. Let's hit it. Let's roll. This is our chance to make razor history. Let's dream big. All you have to do is say that five blades can happen, and it will happen. If you aren't on board, then .... you. And if you're on the board, then .... you and your father. Hey, if I'm the only one who'll take risks, I'm sure as hell happy to hog all the glory when the five-blade razor becomes the shaving tool for the U.S. of "this is how we shave now" A.

People said we couldn't go to three. It'll cost a fortune to manufacture, they said. Well, we did it. Now some egghead in a lab is screaming "Five's crazy?" Well, perhaps he'd be more comfortable in the labs at Norelco, working on #### electrics. Rotary blades, my white #!

I'm a big AMD fan but three cores are barely better than two. Buy it anyway - AMD needs to live if the computer market is to be bearable at all in ten years. Via makes some interesting stuff too - and they're not afraid to cut the watts and make them small. You can do some very neat stuff with a low watt CPU on a small board.

It doesn't take a great deal of insight to see we're going to 8 cores per processor on the desktop sometime in the next few years. Dual 16 core processors will happen within ten if competition keeps the pressure up. Personally I don't care if every core is on a separate slab of silicon as long as they integrate in the package well. Yields are better that way I imagine. Somebody tell them to get the watts down. Electricity is mostly made from CO2 emissions:

PCs worldwide consume about 80 billion kilowatt-hours of electricity every year.

Re:Un No. Well, Not even close...

[TheRaven64]

The new Phenom Tri-Core, is NOT a quad core with a core disabled/broken. If it was, then it would have the cache of a quad-core wouldnt it? Unlike Intel, AMD use a per-core cache and so disabling one core would disable one quarter of the cache too. Beyond that, cache is also a used as a differentiator. The amount of cache in both product lines varies because cache accounts for well over half of the die size and disabling a few banks of cache around a defect lets them sell a chip that would otherwise be scrapped. Often the large cache and small cache chips are exactly the same, but the small-cache versions have a flaw (typically a tiny bit of dirt on the wafer) somewhere in the cache and so have part of it disabled.

It would also have most of the power consumption of a quad-core woulnt it? No, it would have slightly under 3/4 of the power consumption, the difference being accounted for by the fact that the other cores would need fewer interconnects.

Give him a break

[r_jensen11]

How many dual core chips are really four core chips with two failed cores? Do you know? Face it, it's just the number three which bugs you, and that's pretty childish... The number 3 pisses off a lot of people. I like/tend to attribute it to Mr. Owl's amazing ability to consume Tootsie Roll Pops.