“Five years ago, Intel envisioned processors running at 20 GHz by the end of this decade. Today we know that the future will look different. CPUs will sacrifice clock speed over core count: Intel’s first “many core” CPU, will run at only two thirds of the clock speed of today’s fastest Xeon CPU – but achieve 15x the performance, thanks to 32 cores,” Wolfgang Gruener reports for TG Daily.
“So far, it has been unclear when those “many-cores” will actually be available. Documents provided by an industry source and seen by TG Daily, however, indicate that at least “dozens of cores” may be still some time away. The first processor of “Keifer” – Intel’s project name for many-core processors – will be surfacing in the 2009/2010 time frame and integrate 32 cores (128 threads total): The first Keifer chip will be manufactured in 32 nm and use eight processing nodes with four cores each. Every node will have direct access to one 3 MB on-die last level cache (LLC) and 512 kB L2 cache. There will be a total of 8 x 3 MB LLC slices that are connected by a ring architecture and represent a total 24 MB of cache,” Gruener reports.
“Intel does not consider AMD’s Opteron and successors as Kevet’s and Keifer’s benchmark. The documents seen by TG Daily aim Keifer at Sun’s “Niagara” architecture, which is currently available in the “Ultra Sparc T1″ processor. The T1 was launched last year with great fanfare as 1.2 GHz 8-core processor with 3 MB L2 cache and capable of handling a total 32 threads at a peak power of just 72 watts,” Gruener reports. “Intel can’t touch the performance of the T1 in its home turf at this time and the specifications of Niagara’s successors are widely based on speculations… Intel knows that a simple increase of threads combined with “multi-core” processors won’t allow the company to keep Sun’s pace. Engineers at the firm believe that a new architecture – which is rumored to be launched in 2008 – and 32 cores are necessary to catch up and ultimately trump Sun in the 2009/2010 time frame: Key to Intel’s advantage may be clock speed, once again: The company estimates that Niagara III won’t be able to run faster than 2.0 GHz – while Keifer will run at least at 2.0 GHz.”
Full article here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Herm,” “Judge Bork, ” and “LinuxGuy” for the heads up.]
MacDailyNews Take: AMD and toast: virtually indistinguishable.
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Hope AMD sells a lot of their server chips to Dell now while they still can…
will they be able to run vista?
Future versions of Windows will be so bloated that they’ll need 32 cores just to perform poorly.
i think HAL was vista ready?!?
HAL ran vista, thats where he got his personality from.
> i think HAL was vista ready?!?
Unfortunately not. Vista was too demanding and HAL could not display in Aero Glass. All he could do under Vista was flash a little red light…
Apple advertisement in the Year 2012:
“Experience the new (Power)mac 64.
64 stands not for 64 bit, but 64 cores…”
excuse me while i mount my time machine, i can’t wait to get one…
lol
So can someone explain to me why multiple cores @ 2.0Ghz is favorable to 2 cores at 2.0Ghz? Is this an issue with power usage and efficiency?
I simply just don’t know.
Thanks
I’m going to do just fine, thank you.
I’ll believe it when I see it. I think chip companies tend to talk a lot.
back in the early 90s – in college – i told people that increased speeds were not going to be as important as having multiprocessing operating systems and simply throwing additional processors at the problem.
I was wrong in thinking that they would be packaged separately in discrete processing units – i saw things like upgrade cards in the IIci and such as the way it would go.
I was an Amiga user, and so, the idea of getting multiple processors involved seemed the most reasonable to me, rather that just faster and faster all the time.
When I get that chip in whatever tower Apple has at the time (or whatever new enclosure design they come up with) and couple it with that new RAM from Freescale, then Photoshop should be able to read my mind and work in real time. No more mouse and keyboard – the computer will be able to read brainwaves.
The reason Intel is bragging about 32 core processors is because of the Cell+, it’s been strangly silent at IBM/Sony/Toshiba lately.
Also strangly silent from Apple.
Remember folks, Apple sold a SH*TLOAD of hardware when they were the only ones with the G5 processor. Scientists love Cell+.
Also another clue, where are the video card upgrade options for PCI-X based G5’s?
Is it because the Cell+ can do the video rendering itself a heck of a lot cheaper than a dedicated GPU? And now the video card hardware companies don’t see much of a future in Apple Towers so they are winding down the Mac part of their buisness?
Apple is able to place 4 Cell+’s in a box, no problem.
32 cores on a processor substancially lowers the yield and increases the heat, it’s not going to happen.
Even dual cores are not cool enough for laptops…er notebooks.
G-Spank:
I’m surprised at you. Don’t you know when manufacturers are providing future direction and roadmaps so that companies can plan ahead and make informed buying decisions?
PennyPacker,
The true performance of a computer is not how fast it can run, but how much work it can get done in a certain amount of time. The plan until now has been to get essentially single-lane processors as fast as possible, but due to physics, too much heat was being generated.
The human brain processes in parallel. Why not computers? Well, that’s the new approach.
Multiple cores can simultaneously do computations at a slower speed (which means less heat), and still get more work done after a given amount of time.
Does that answer your question?
“So can someone explain to me why multiple cores @ 2.0Ghz is favorable to 2 cores at 2.0Ghz? Is this an issue with power usage and efficiency?”
For the same reason that two cores at 2 GHz is favorable to one core at 2 GHz: more cores means more units to calculate tasks independently. More cores also means calculation power is gained without rising temperatures, which is a consequence of higher clock frequencies. However, to utilise all those cores the software that’s being run must support this feature.
Magic Word: mother as in motherboard for 32 cores?
******coolfactor*******
So, this is:
like one guy that peels 5 potatos an hour (solo core, for example) to 5 guys that can peel 5 potatoes per hour (multiple cores), instead of one guy that can peel 20+ apples per hour? So it’s better to have 5 guys peeling 5 apples per hour than to have one guy that can peel 20+ per/hour?
This explanation is brought to you by the letters M, A, & C, and the number 32.
*****Switched*****
how does this translate for users of everyday applications: iLife, Adobe CS, Office and the like? Will the additon of multiple cores benefit the use of those types of “every day applications?
32 cores … holy sheite
Sigh. Intel back to their old rubbish–just when you thought they’d figured it out.
Hey Intel! Whatever happened to the 6GHz chips we were supposed to have by now?
Do you have to put down AMD just to make sure things stay at the 5-th grade level?
Maybe AMD will put some great chips in Macs someday. Who knows?
Talk about how great Intel and Macs are, but the MDN takes that put down the competition with schoolboy jokes are just embarrassing. Put them down with facts or not at all.
OK, to stay with “The Rule”, we’ll need to see doubling every couple of years … right? Added chip speed will take up some of this, but that still leaves a lot to core proliferation.
We are now at a 2-core baseline – a few new systems have more and a few new systems have but one, but a great many are at 2 cores per system.
In 2008 we should be at a 4-core baseline, four slightly faster cores but slightly cooler than we have today.
In 2010 we should be at an 8-core baseline, eight sl …. wait. They said 32 in 2010! Eight quad-cored “processing nodes” … to keep up with Sun? So … that isn’t baseline computers, that’s Workstations and Servers!
We consumers may be reveling in the power of having one or two of these “quad-cored processing nodes” in our personal computers, but I hope code that deals efficiently with multiple cores replaces current code that only grudgingly multi-tasks and hasn’t a clue what that other ‘core thingie’ is.
Wow! If its true – Wow!
AG Pennypacker:
“So, this is:
like one guy that peels 5 potatos an hour (solo core, for example) to 5 guys that can peel 5 potatoes per hour (multiple cores), instead of one guy that can peel 20+ apples per hour? So it’s better to have 5 guys peeling 5 apples per hour than to have one guy that can peel 20+ per/hour?”
Each of those five guys is peeling 5 potatoes per hour, which makes 25 potatoes in total. Since one single super peeler guy (who can peel 25 potatoes per hour) demands more dough than those five guys, it’s more optimal to have those five guys working for you than one single (albeit effective) guy. In other words: it’s better to get your computing power from less-heating, more power-efficient multicore processors than a superhot, electricity-gorging singlecore CPU, which can make your computer unstable. And, even with dualcores speed gains are made according to Moore’s law anyway, so all of this means faster computers to us consumers. Singlecore CPUs can’t get much faster without getting very hot by now. In the end it isn’t possible to find a lone guy who can peel 32 potatoes per hour, just like it isn’t possible to construct a small singlecore processor which could be as fast as a 32 core CPU. (Well, maybe it IS possible in theory, but not in practice, a least not now. And it would be hotter and consume more energy anyway than a multicore CPU.)
“how does this translate for users of everyday applications: iLife, Adobe CS, Office and the like? Will the additon of multiple cores benefit the use of those types of “every day applications?”
Yes. These applications will run faster than before (just like every time new CPUs are introduced).
Wake me up in 2010………
Switched,
It is understandable that the “super peeler” demands more dough per hour, but does he demand more dough per potatoe peeled?
What is the better option…. less “super peelers” or more “normal peelers”?
That is the question that should be asked. Only time and R&D will tell.