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AMD's Triple-Core Phenom X3 Processor Launched
MojoKid writes "AMD officially launched their triple-core processor offering today with the
introduction of the Phenom X3 8750. When AMD first announced plans to introduce tri-core processors
late last year, reaction to the news was mixed. Some felt that AMD was simply planning to pass off partially functional Phenom
X4 quad-core processors as triple-core products, making lemonade from lemons if you will. Others thought it was a good way for AMD to increase bottom line profits, getting more usable die from a wafer and mitigating yield loss. This is an age-old strategy in the semiconductor space and after all, the graphics guys have been selling GPUs with non-functional units for years. This full
performance review and
evaluation of the new AMD Phenom X3 8750 Tri-Core processor shows the CPU
scales well in a number of standard application benchmarks, in addition to
dropping in at a relatively competitive price point."
The idea of reviving quad cores with 1 bad core is nice, but AMD is also playing a dangerous game. It is only in AMD's interest to sell triple core CPUs when the only alternative would be to throw the (large and expensive) die out since it can't work as a quad core. However, if these things became too popular AMD would be faced with the situation of either starving the market, or taking quad cores that actually DO work and intentionally blowing the fuses to make them triple cores.
I think this might explain the pretty lackluster clockspeeds. Phenom has never clocked well, but when you can buy a 2.5Ghz quad core for not much more than the top of the line 2.4Ghz triple core, it's pretty clear AMD wants to unload these things, but not to make any big waves about it. If anything the triple cores ought to clock much higher and have substantially better power usage... but that is not the case.
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That's what I remembered. Really though, the GP's post still stands; there isn't an amazing reason why we shouldn't have non-integer powers of two as our core count - or odd numbers, or prime numbers (3 is all of the above). I say, bring on the 7 core CPUs! Plus, marketing people might think that "5000" has a better ring to it than "8192".
The only thing I don't see happening is fractional counts - 7.5 cores (7 full, and one "handicapped"). The OS would then have to learn to avoid the "gimpy" cores for CPU hungry processes.
...that makes AMD more competitive and sell more processors is a good thing in my book.
After all, healthy competition keeps them honest, eh?
No sig for the moment.
And as the GP states,The beauty of it (from an engineering point of view) is that every core has been designed with 3 HT links. One goes to the memory, and two connect to other cores. So really, in a four-core system, there is an additional latency because information needs two hops to reach all of the cores. Three cores is the max AMD can do while still keeping latency at its lowest.
I'm not exactly sure if this is how the demoted quad-cores will work as well, but I imagine it wouldn't be too hard to reconfigure the fourth HT bridge (on the disabled core) to act as a short-circuit.
Most likely, the core has been laser trimmed in such a way that it's not even connected any more. Almost certainly no way to re-enable it.
For that matter, why would you suspect the rest might be dodgy? They've passed functional testing.
Who cares? Even if the chip was a failed quad core with one of the cores disabled, why is it bad for AMD to sell them as triple cores? Would you prefer they just melt the silicon back down, wasting time, money, and most importantly, energy? I certainly don't.
A pentagon is not symmetrical? You have a strange definition of symmetry.
I was expecting 2, 4, 8, etc. ... not 3 ?!?
Don't look at it from a marketing perspective, look at it from a manufacturing perspective. It is not a 3, it is a 4 - 1. A quad core with one broken core.
To AMD fanboi's who are reading, take a breath and do not interpret the above as an attack on AMD. This is a perfectly reasonable thing to do, why waste the three good cores and all the energy, time, and resources that went into producing them. Disable the failed core and sell the part as a trio at a discount relative to the quad.
I'm having flashbacks to the original Pentium, where a production line manufactured 120 MHz CPUs but when packaged the CPUs could be 75, 90, or 120 MHz. Some 75s were CPUs that failed at 120 and 90 but passed at 75, but many were good 120s that shipped as 75s because all the 120 orders were filled and 75 orders were pending. Hence the legendary overclocking of the 75. I wonder if dual cores will someday follow a similar pattern. The production line manufactures quads but they are packaged as quads or duos depending on testing and orders to be filled.
Anything that makes AMD more competitive and sell more processors is a good thing in my book. After all, healthy competition keeps them honest, eh?
And it is a greener strategy, less waste of resources and energy, so there are public relations and marketing benefits as well.
No, the quoted text from TechReport doesn't say anything about how well the CPU works. It suggests that some applications were coded with performance hacks for two- or four-core systems and didn't deal too well with having three.
If the CPU executed faulty instructions, caused system crashes or failed to divide 4195835.0 by 3145727.0 properly then you could say that the CPU was not "working perfectly well". If causing Windows Vista to "have trouble" was a sign of a CPU not working then you would have much bigger problems than just this.
Intel doesn't fabricate quad core processors - they only make single and dual core chips. They may well be selling bad dual cores as single core processors (or not), but their chips are tested well before two dual cores get glued together into a quad core so they don't have the same situation that makes triple-core make sense for AMD.
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>>leaving you with 7 cores-one for the OS and 6 for games/apps.
This is not really true. Unless the games/apps have been written to take advantage of the 6 other cores (SPEs), then they will not use them, everything will run on the PPE, including the OS.
I have a competing hypothesis: greed is short-sighted.
Honestly, that's a stupid strategy that assumes that oil is the only viable energy source. Nuclear power and reasonable urban architecture can make for a sustainable society well into 2500.
"We returned the General to El Salvador, or maybe Guatemala, it's difficult to tell from 10,000 feet"