How long before Octacore CPU's ???

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coldpower27

Golden Member
Jul 18, 2004
1,676
0
76
Originally posted by: Deleted member 4644
8 cores would be pretty stupid right now. Maybe in 2-5 years we will all want/have 8 cores, but right now most software cannot even use quad-core. If you really need 8-core, you have a server type motherboard anyways.

Also, the heat and power requirements from 8 cores would be insane (Think 1000W power supply min).

We already have Quad Core at 75-100W with the Yorkfield QX9650 two of those is merely 200W at most, a native 1 Socket version would be even less.

The thing is Octo Core would push down prices for Quad's so it is a good thing for them to bring it to market sooner.

If we have Native Octo Core that would be a huge boon for a 2P motherboard as then you can have 16 Cores in a Single system easily.
 
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Deleted member 4644

Originally posted by: coldpower27
Originally posted by: Deleted member 4644
8 cores would be pretty stupid right now. Maybe in 2-5 years we will all want/have 8 cores, but right now most software cannot even use quad-core. If you really need 8-core, you have a server type motherboard anyways.

Also, the heat and power requirements from 8 cores would be insane (Think 1000W power supply min).

We already have Quad Core at 75-100W with the Yorkfield QX9650 two of those is merely 200W at most, a native 1 Socket version would be even less.

The thing is Octo Core would push down prices for Quad's so it is a good thing for them to bring it to market sooner.

If we have Native Octo Core that would be a huge boon for a 2P motherboard as then you can have 16 Cores in a Single system easily.

There are inefficiencies in scaling that are pretty significant. Aside from scientific type software, it is somewhat hard to force software to utilize multiple cores.

I would rather see improvements to individual cores rather than 16x or 8x systems. I'm sure that in 2020 we will all have 64 cores or something..

Also, 200W for the CPU alone is a LOT.
 

Idontcare

Elite Member
Oct 10, 1999
21,110
64
91
If you read up on your Amdahl's law you'll see that the limits of performance are indeed bound by the fraction of code which can never be parallelized. I.e. the serial code.

An ideal trade-off would be a mutli-core single-socket processor in which a beefed up core (either higher GHz or higher IPC) resided alongside many simpler cores (lower GHz or lower IPC).

The beefed up core would handle the serial code, the slower/simpler cores would handle the parallel code.

In a beowulf computer system (parallel processing across multiple computers) this is accomplished by making the head-node be the fastest processor afforable and the slave/worker nodes be slower/cheaper and more numerous computing nodes.

I wouldn't mind if my next Quad-core had one core that raced along at 4 or 5 GHz while the remaining 3 cores skooted along at a mere 3.5 GHz.

That keeps the heat down and boosts the single-thread app performance nicely.
 

aka1nas

Diamond Member
Aug 30, 2001
4,335
1
0
Amdahl's law will quickly bite you hard if you just try to take the same algorithm or piece of work and break it up between increasing numbers of CPU cores or threads. Developers can still take great advantage of more cores by finding additional work for them to do. There's plenty of extra things that would be interesting to simulate to add more realism and depth to games and many of those tasks can be farmed out to extra cores. I for one would like to see real-time text-to-speech engines in games instead of scripted dialogue.

The real problem is that we'll "only" have 8 or 16 cores in a few years.
 

GuitarDaddy

Lifer
Nov 9, 2004
11,465
1
0
Originally posted by: Idontcare
If you read up on your Amdahl's law you'll see that the limits of performance are indeed bound by the fraction of code which can never be parallelized. I.e. the serial code.

An ideal trade-off would be a mutli-core single-socket processor in which a beefed up core (either higher GHz or higher IPC) resided alongside many simpler cores (lower GHz or lower IPC).

The beefed up core would handle the serial code, the slower/simpler cores would handle the parallel code.

In a beowulf computer system (parallel processing across multiple computers) this is accomplished by making the head-node be the fastest processor afforable and the slave/worker nodes be slower/cheaper and more numerous computing nodes.

I wouldn't mind if my next Quad-core had one core that raced along at 4 or 5 GHz while the remaining 3 cores skooted along at a mere 3.5 GHz.

That keeps the heat down and boosts the single-thread app performance nicely.


That brings up an interesting question. With phenoms ability to clock cores individually, I would like to see what kind of differencial clocks you can acheive. All the benches we've seen so far show all cores clocked the same, lets see how far a single core can clock while the rest are underclocked. Or two high two low

 

chevmaro

Member
Dec 30, 2005
113
0
0
I think I remember my XBOX 360 having 7 Core if that counts. It was either that or the PS3 I cant remember.
 

CTho9305

Elite Member
Jul 26, 2000
9,214
1
81
Originally posted by: firewolfsm
Not until mature 45nm.

Intel does have 50W 45nm Quads coming out so I don't see why they can't do octo right now (only at 2.4GHz)

That'd be a 4-die MCM. I'm not sure there's room on on the current sockets for that; even if there is, there might not be enough metal available to route all the signals. It'd be extremely expensive too. The other issue is that you'd have the same FSB-bandwidth/throughput limitations as you currently have with multi-socket Intel systems: they just don't scale up well to a large number of cores. Even if the enthusiast market would put up with that, the server market probably wouldn't, and the enthusiast market probably isn't big enough to warrant the R&D costs - particularly if it requires a new socket.

Originally posted by: chevmaro
I think I remember my XBOX 360 having 7 Core if that counts. It was either that or the PS3 I cant remember.

The PS3 has 1 simple core (no out of order execution, 2 threads though which helps a little), and 7 DSPs (number crunching engines that are very very very very slow for most tasks, since not only are they in-order, they lack branch prediction).
 

KingstonU

Golden Member
Dec 26, 2006
1,405
16
81
Originally posted by: BTRY B 529th FA BN
at one point, i heard Intel was going to keep adding more cores while AMD was going to incorporate some other type of processing aside from parallel processing... can't remember what they called it but it, ahh yes, i think the word was FUSION.... but i think that was before the ATI AMD merge...


I'm pretty sure that merging with ATI was specifically to be able to make Fusion. A chip with both CPU and GPU cores on a single chip in a way that eliminates the need for discreet graphics cards. Since AMD makes CPUs and ATI makes GPUs. Is this wrong?
 
Nov 26, 2005
15,194
403
126
what programmers ought to do, is start coding for 8 + cores now, as well as 128 bit and have an option for the end users to chose how many core coding to use... but that may just be a stupid idea... probably is... and would cut themselves out of a job down the road...
 

PlasmaBomb

Lifer
Nov 19, 2004
11,636
2
81
Originally posted by: Idontcare
If you read up on your Amdahl's law you'll see that the limits of performance are indeed bound by the fraction of code which can never be parallelized. I.e. the serial code.

An ideal trade-off would be a mutli-core single-socket processor in which a beefed up core (either higher GHz or higher IPC) resided alongside many simpler cores (lower GHz or lower IPC).

The beefed up core would handle the serial code, the slower/simpler cores would handle the parallel code.

In a beowulf computer system (parallel processing across multiple computers) this is accomplished by making the head-node be the fastest processor afforable and the slave/worker nodes be slower/cheaper and more numerous computing nodes.

I wouldn't mind if my next Quad-core had one core that raced along at 4 or 5 GHz while the remaining 3 cores skooted along at a mere 3.5 GHz.

That keeps the heat down and boosts the single-thread app performance nicely.

AMDs overclocking utility lets you independantly clock the cores so that might be possible in the future :D

Edit: PS I want my dual socket octa cores with SMP now please (if it's not too much bother)
 

Acanthus

Lifer
Aug 28, 2001
19,915
2
76
ostif.org
Originally posted by: aka1nas
Amdahl's law will quickly bite you hard if you just try to take the same algorithm or piece of work and break it up between increasing numbers of CPU cores or threads. Developers can still take great advantage of more cores by finding additional work for them to do. There's plenty of extra things that would be interesting to simulate to add more realism and depth to games and many of those tasks can be farmed out to extra cores. I for one would like to see real-time text-to-speech engines in games instead of scripted dialogue.

The real problem is that we'll "only" have 8 or 16 cores in a few years.

Which is exactly the idea behind the Sony/Toshiba Cell processor. The only problem being they did it half assed and wasted enormous amounts of money on research that ended up being fruitless.

They go through all the trouble deleoping cell, then slump on the manufacturing technology making its premire product (the PS3) late by proxy.

They cut corners in areas that wouldve made the CPU an excellent platform for things other than gaming, like making it an in-order CPU.

Early in development they abandoned x86 support.

It's an incredibly complex chip to try to design, and i dont think Sony/Toshibas team was up to the task to be frank. They got a product, but its nothing like it could have been.

It went from a multiplatform wide adoption concept to basically the PS3 CPU and some completely proprietary uses for it. Oh wait, you can use the defective ones in TVs and Blu-Ray players!!!

I kind of wandered off of the subject, but my point is... If someone were to make a "real Cell" (X86 & X64, out of order, a lot more cache, smaller process, PC based platform) it would be a very dominant CPU.

AMD is kind of flirting with a similar idea but using specialized cores, for things like physics and graphics.

Intel is developing an entire "system on a chip" architecture where you have the CPU, mobo, memory, and thats it for a fully working system.