Dual Core Opteron Question

[Sahrin]

I was just thinking about this, and I've currently got a 246 running on a 2P motherboard...and the Dual Core stuff looks *very* exciting, will it be possible to mix Dual Core and single core processors? To get something wicked like three physical cores! Haha! ... I can't think of a reason it wouldn't be, but it could cause some interesting traffic situations on the DC architecture.

 

[Matthias99]

I can't see any reason why it wouldn't be possible, electrically, but I guess it depends on exactly what (if anything) changes in the logical interfaces when they go to dual cores (I mean, there has to be a way for the MB/BIOS to talk specifically to one of the cores). If they used a different protocol on the HT links or something, the older 2XX CPUs might not be able to interface with them properly -- but if they had planned on this from the beginning, the support might be there even if they do change stuff around.

It could definitely cause some odd HT traffic patterns, especially on boards where only one CPU slot has RAM slots.

 

[iwantanewcomputer]

interesting question
the duallies are going to use the same sockets right? i assume they will support this but it has got to cause weird traffic problems. mobo's may be designed to have like one dual core socket and one single core socket

either way, who cares cause if you can afford a dual-dual core mobo, a bunch of ram, a dual core opty and a single core opty, i'm pretty sure you'll be able to stretch that to 2 dual cores