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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.
AntiFA: An abbreviation for Anti First Amendment.
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.
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.