Does anyone else see having >2 core cpu's as a step backwards?

[BigToque]

I can understand having a dual CPU system where 1 CPU could run everything the OS needs and have the second CPU doing your intensive tasks like encoding (and having the first help out if it was available).

Beyond that I just see having >2 CPU's to be a step backwards. In my mind it will keep individual cores from advancing, and to get more power they just stick more cores on 1 package.

What's the point? Wouldn't it be better to make a single core CPU that performes as well as a single dual-core CPU?

 

[MobiusPizza]

Because they can't
Intel would love to stick to single core and make 10Ghz chips. But they can't
Technology had made their limit.
The leakage current, heat and deemed that impossible. Even going to 65nm doesn't yeild much frequency headroom

Dual core is the option

No it doesn't suck a lot more power because of although you nearly have double performance, you are more likely to be idling. With smart power management it is possible that dual core uses less power

And once you got to stage of multicores, performance scales well even if you have low powered poor performance cores.

That's what Intel's buzzing about with this performance/Watt

It is easier to develop a dual core than to develop a singlecore that is twice as fast.
In fact, a hell load harder
you get what I mean

 

[TOPACTION]

interesting question, its because they can't mignaturize transistore more ?

 

[MobiusPizza]

Originally posted by: TOPACTION
interesting question, its because they can't mignaturize transistore more ?

65nm process is on its way

It's still possible to minimise transistors. But it is the problems that it brings which is the culprit.

The leakage current brings out heat problems as well as performance issues when interconnects are thinner.

Time to move on other way of making better processors.
Like Optoelectronics or Quantum electronics

 

[piasabird]

What is the advantage of faster? It might make more sense to have smarter devices with hardware implementation. You could have one processor running background processes while you use the other CPU to run the live device like a game. You might also use this in an application to cut down the heat. I think the P4-M is a better approach. More can be done with less with better engineering.

 

[w00t]

dual core owns just i am a gamer so its not for me.

 

[Lonyo]

It's called diminishing returns.
It's not worth making faster single cores because the requirements to bump up the speed by a decent amount (in terms of heat/power/complexity/transistor counts) is so high that it's not worth it compared with just using 2 or more cores instead, since 2 cores gives you theoretically twice the computing power without a huge amount more of anything (complexity/heat/power - when you also factor in die shrinks and minor improvements)

The amount of changes that making a Prescott single core good enough to be in the future as fast as 2xPrescott cores would be too great to be worthwhile.

 

[Malladine]

Originally posted by: w00t
dual core owns just i am a gamer so its not for me.

not yet for you

 

[aatf510]

I upgrade to a 4400+ from a FX-55 recently. I didn't find my system slower nor faster in anyway.
Alt-tabing out of a game haven't improve and degrade either.

 

[Bona Fide]

Well, it actually IS a matter of speed, in a sense. There is a reason that workstation users like their quad-Opteron setups.

As technology improves, more and more apps will become SMP-/SMT-aware. So, you will benefit from multiple cores, ONLY if Windows' task scheduler improves.

Example: 3d StudioMAX on a 4-core system

CPU 0/1 : 3dSM rendering
CPU 2 : OS background tasks
CPU 3 : Web browsing

--OR--

CPU 0/1/2/3 : 3dSM rendering

It's all about increased efficiency and the ability to multitask.

 

[Muscles]

Originally posted by: toattett
I upgrade to a 4400+ from a FX-55 recently. I didn't find my system slower nor faster in anyway.
Alt-tabing out of a game haven't improve and degrade either.

That's why I've been telling people that ask not to waste the money getting dual core. Dual core is just way overhyped with no benefit to the average user and especially users who are primarily gamers. People can say games will eventually support dual core all they want but if you do a little research you'll find that the best programmers and game designers in the world including Tim Sweeny and John Carmack have stated that programming for Dual core is extremely difficult and it will take a long time before games benefit from it.

 

[MobiusPizza]

Originally posted by: Muscles

Originally posted by: toattett
I upgrade to a 4400+ from a FX-55 recently. I didn't find my system slower nor faster in anyway.
Alt-tabing out of a game haven't improve and degrade either.

That's why I've been telling people that ask not to waste the money getting dual core. Dual core is just way overhyped with no benefit to the average user and especially users who are primarily gamers. People can say games will eventually support dual core all they want but if you do a little research you'll find that the best programmers and game designers in the world including Tim Sweeny and John Carmack have stated that programming for Dual core is extremely difficult and it will take a long time before games benefit from it.

Intel had an interesting technology to split a single threaded software to multithreaded one. Forgot what it's called. It's a recent article in Anandtech, one of the IDF articles. It sounded promising

 

[orangat]

I think the next big revolution would be in the OS is necessary to take advantage of new multi-core CPUs.
Or the multi-core CPUs would have to develop the functionality to distribute the workload by itself just like the x86 decoder on the early post-Pentium CPUs.

 

[imported_g33k]

Originally posted by: Stefan
I can understand having a dual CPU system where 1 CPU could run everything the OS needs and have the second CPU doing your intensive tasks like encoding (and having the first help out if it was available).

Beyond that I just see having >2 CPU's to be a step backwards. In my mind it will keep individual cores from advancing, and to get more power they just stick more cores on 1 package.

What's the point? Wouldn't it be better to make a single core CPU that performes as well as a single dual-core CPU?

I agree with you. How many cores beyond two can an average user make use of? While workstations and servers can make use of more and more cores, the average home user will not need it. So things will have to change on the software side of things to make use of multi-core. I expect Vista will be optimized for dual core, so we are talking at least a year away.

 

[ElFenix]

individual cores will advance. we'll still see architecture improvements. we'll still see clockspeed improvements. but we'll also see more cores. so now we have another way to advance the performance of the hardware.