AMD's multi-core approach was right from start, Intel's not

Posted on Wednesday, March 01 2006 @ 0:10 CET by Thomas De Maesschalck
Nathan Brookwood, a well known chip analysts, send a note to his clients that in the future multi-cores will be used by chip firms to market their products.

Until a few years ago Intel said clock speeds were going to reach 10GHz by the end of this decade but now they are talking more and more about processors with tents and perhaps hundreds of cores within ten years.
Brookwood said that Intel's first foray into dual core designs have weak performance because of the need for that architecture to share one front side bus connecting both to the north bridge.

However, he said, Intel engineers in Israel got it right with Yonah by sharing cache and system interface functions across both cores. He said Insight 64 regards front side bus interfaces as an "archaic" design concept. But, he said, Yonah's approach "makes the best of a bad situation".

He reckons that Intel's Clovertown quad core will consist of two Woodcrests crammed into a single package. "We've seen that movie before, and it didn't have a happy ending then, either," he said.
Read more over at The Inquirer.


About the Author

Thomas De Maesschalck

Thomas has been messing with computer since early childhood and firmly believes the Internet is the best thing since sliced bread. Enjoys playing with new tech, is fascinated by science, and passionate about financial markets. When not behind a computer, he can be found with running shoes on or lifting heavy weights in the weight room.



Loading Comments