Monday, April 24, 2006
Quad core processors and beyond!
Dual core processors are fairly recent additions to the market but if we're lucky, we might even see a true quad core processor released from Intel in Q1 of 2007. Currently Intel has a 4 core processor but what it actually is is two dual cores stacked on top of each other so it's not a "true" quad core.
Tim Sweeney of Epic games discusses in a presentation he gave many of the problems that Epic has had while trying to develop their latest graphics engine and many of the time problems that have arisen because of having to program for multiple cores. Tim predicts near the end of his presentation that by 2009 we'll see 20+ cores on a processor.
Since Intel and AMD gave up the speed war in the last couple of years, the core count will be the new battleground for power. I was joking with my friend the other day that eventually we could just have one core dedicated to handling spyware tasks because there would just be so many cores it's not really going to slow anything down much.
I was recently buying a new processor and it's actually not very obvious which processor is more powerful based on packaging. The AMD 4200+ runs at 2.2 GHz but the Intel Core Duo processors are running around 2.8 for a similar price or faster. With both being dual cores, the AMD is faster with games than the Intel. It will be much easier to decide which processor to get I think once games can take better advantage of the multiple cores and AMD and Intel are creating more than two cores per chip.
But Tim also points out the development costs, time and hazards of developing a multicore/process application are high.
I'd like to see a guide on creating multiprocess applications. Does anyone know of any good tutorials or documentation for doing so? ¶ 11:15 PM
Dual core processors are fairly recent additions to the market but if we're lucky, we might even see a true quad core processor released from Intel in Q1 of 2007. Currently Intel has a 4 core processor but what it actually is is two dual cores stacked on top of each other so it's not a "true" quad core.
Tim Sweeney of Epic games discusses in a presentation he gave many of the problems that Epic has had while trying to develop their latest graphics engine and many of the time problems that have arisen because of having to program for multiple cores. Tim predicts near the end of his presentation that by 2009 we'll see 20+ cores on a processor.
Since Intel and AMD gave up the speed war in the last couple of years, the core count will be the new battleground for power. I was joking with my friend the other day that eventually we could just have one core dedicated to handling spyware tasks because there would just be so many cores it's not really going to slow anything down much.
I was recently buying a new processor and it's actually not very obvious which processor is more powerful based on packaging. The AMD 4200+ runs at 2.2 GHz but the Intel Core Duo processors are running around 2.8 for a similar price or faster. With both being dual cores, the AMD is faster with games than the Intel. It will be much easier to decide which processor to get I think once games can take better advantage of the multiple cores and AMD and Intel are creating more than two cores per chip.
But Tim also points out the development costs, time and hazards of developing a multicore/process application are high.
I'd like to see a guide on creating multiprocess applications. Does anyone know of any good tutorials or documentation for doing so? ¶ 11:15 PM
