[FallenFromTheTree]

Just caught this on AP news this morning.

The race is on!

Mar 1, 9:30 PM (ET)

By MATTHEW FORDAHL

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) - Promising improved performance without greatly increased power needs, Intel Corp. (INTC) unveiled details Tuesday of upcoming microprocessors that will put two or more computing engines on a single chip.

The world's largest chip maker plans to use the technology across its processor lines, from those powering mobile computers to the brains of high-end servers. In all, Intel has 15 projects under way developing dual-core or multi-core chips.

Intel plans to launch dual-core desktop chips in the second quarter, offering two varieties geared toward high-end and mainstream users, respectively. It's also planning dual-core and multicore chips for servers and notebooks for release later this year and in 2006.

The high-end desktop chip, dubbed the Intel Pentium Processor Extreme Edition, will run at 3.2 gigahertz - slower than the 3.8 GHz of today's top-of-the-line Pentium 4. Still, during one demonstration, it performed a task in half the time of its single-core counterpart.

Stephen Smith, vice president of Intel's Digital Enterprise Group, said performance improvements will vary depending on the job. Multicore chips offer the greatest improvement when the software is designed to distribute tasks over the multiple engines.

But the technology also should improve performance when multiple programs are running at the same time, he added. All modern PCs typically have several pieces of software working in the background, including antivirus tools, network utilities and others.

Also, the Extreme Edition's cores will use a technology that essentially nearly doubles the amount of work that can be handled by each core. Because of this, the operating system will work as though there are four cores, instead of the physical two.

The mainstream processor, dubbed the Pentium D, won't have that feature enabled. Smith also did not indicate that chip's clock speed.

The new processors' prices were not disclosed.

Intel isn't alone in bringing multicore chips to market. Rival Advanced Micro Devices also has plans to launch dual-core chips later this year.

And a trio of companies - International Business Machines Corp. (IBM), Toshiba Corp. and Sony Corp. (SNE) - are building a multicore chip based on a completely new architecture. It's expected to power Sony's next-generation PlayStation game console, among other devices.

The industry's move toward multicore processors comes as the number of transistors crammed on a single chip continues to increase in accordance with a famous prediction made by Intel co-founder Gordon Moore in 1965.

But while higher clock speeds are resulting in greater power demands, that is not translating into major gains in performance, threatening the historical growth in computing capabilities.

"It's the way the industry is going to be able to continue Moore's Law going forward by increasing the processing power in an exponential fashion over time," Intel CEO Craig Barrett told reporters at the company's forum for developers.

[Satchmo]

The world's largest chip maker plans to use the technology across its processor lines, from those powering mobile computers to the brains of high-end servers. In all, Intel has 15 projects under way developing dual-core or multi-core chips. Intel plans to launch dual-core desktop chips in the second quarter, offering two varieties geared toward high-end and mainstream users, respectively. It's also planning dual-core and multicore chips for servers and notebooks for release later this year and in 2006.

Pardon my ignorance, but does "announcing" mean that they have succeeded at manufacturing a dual-core chip? Is this a PR/marketing spin to keep up with the others or can they actually deliver the goods?

[hmurchison]

Wait until you see IBMs dual core stuff. They've been doing it A LOT longer than Intel has and OSX has supported SMP for quite some time. Advantage- Apple

[Jay]

Well according to the stuff over at Anandtech it looks like they had working demos of 65 nm dual core chips so it doesn't look like Intel is all that far behind. Apple still is ahead of the game even if they don't get dual core chips into machines first, just with software support. Now we will finally have multithreaded games.

[Wraven]

Now we will finally have multithreaded games.

Just an FYI, but almost all modern games are mutlithreaded.

[ast3r3x]

Quick question.

Dual core chips act the same as a dual processor computer correct? I mean everything must be multithreaded and all of that jazz to take advantage of the 2nd processor correct?

[Jay]

Originally Posted by Wraven Just an FYI, but almost all modern games are mutlithreaded.

The last I knew it was audio and video each had their own thread, do newer games have more that that, I'm not that much of a gamer so I don't know. The last time I heard anything about being dual processor aware was with the release of Halo. I was thinking that video and audio would have more than one thread each, so video has like 4 threads each one handling a specific action, like game physics, AI control, etc. then audio having 2 or more of it's own threads. If they do exist I'm curious what Mac games have the that capability? I'm not trying to flame you or anything, just looking for some examples.

[Wraven]

Jay,
No problem. My specific experience as a developer has been with a myriad of Java games for which I have written or seen source code. I wouldn't know about Halo per se, but your example of the "types" of functions which would be segmented out to different threads pretty much answers your question (i.e. Halo, a modern game).

Most games have at least 2 or 3 threads along the line you described. I have no source code to show you, for now...

[Quagmire]

Originally Posted by ast3r3x Quick question. Dual core chips act the same as a dual processor computer correct? I mean everything must be multithreaded and all of that jazz to take advantage of the 2nd processor correct?

Yeah. It is 2 processors in the size of one. The Power4 and Power5 are dual core. So IBM should have an advantage since they have experience with dual core chips. I am just hoping apple keeps the 2 processor setup so we can have a sort of speak quad.

[Jay]

Originally Posted by Wraven Jay, No problem. My specific experience as a developer has been with a myriad of Java games for which I have written or seen source code. I wouldn't know about Halo per se, but your example of the "types" of functions which would be segmented out to different threads pretty much answers your question (i.e. Halo, a modern game). Most games have at least 2 or 3 threads along the line you described. I have no source code to show you, for now...

Thanks for the info. Don't bother finding the source code I probably couldn't understand it until I get a year or two of college down.

[bostongeek]

Originally Posted by hmurchison Wait until you see IBMs dual core stuff. They've been doing it A LOT longer than Intel has and OSX has supported SMP for quite some time. Advantage- Apple

Hasn't the Windows OS supported SMP for quite a long time now (talking about desktop OS, not server OS)?

I remember running Quake 3 in SMP under Win2K Pro with dual Intel CPUs a long time ago. Windows XP Pro supports SMP as well.

I guess I just don't see how this is an Intel vs. Apple thing.

[Dave]

Originally Posted by bostongeek Hasn't the Windows OS supported SMP for quite a long time now (talking about desktop OS, not server OS)? I remember running Quake 3 in SMP under Win2K Pro with dual Intel CPUs a long time ago. Windows XP Pro supports SMP as well. I guess I just don't see how this is an Intel vs. Apple thing.

The argument is that while WinXP does support SMP, Mac OS X was designed with a multi-CPU environment in mind and therefore does a better job with it. I have no idea how true that is, but that's what I've heard.

[bostongeek]

Originally Posted by Dave The argument is that while WinXP does support SMP, Mac OS X was designed with a multi-CPU environment in mind and therefore does a better job with it. I have no idea how true that is, but that's what I've heard.

But, isn't XP based on the NT kernel? Which was also designed with a multi-CPU environment in mind?

[Dave]

Originally Posted by bostongeek But, isn't XP based on the NT kernel? Which was also designed with a multi-CPU environment in mind?

IIRC, the NT kernel's SMP support was an add-on rather than an original design decision. I think. Maybe. Anywho, like I said, I don't know how true that statement is.

(Yes, XP is based on NT.)

[IVIIVI4ck3y27]

Originally Posted by bostongeek But, isn't XP based on the NT kernel? Which was also designed with a multi-CPU environment in mind?

If I'm not mistaken, at least originally, XP Home was neutered on SMP vs. XP Pro. It wasn't forecasted as something the average consumer would need (most consumer PC's, after all, aren't dual processor), but a more Prosumer or Professional user would likely want for certain applications that XP Pro was more geared for. I could be wrong there but that's at least what I thought was documented. Whether that's false or whether that situation has or will change is ultimately left up in the air.

As far as gaming...

To my understanding most gaming developers harness the hardware themselves and can write the core functionalities of their game to leverage processes without being burdened to operate them all through the operating system while utilizing the operating system's frameworks (i.e. DirectX, OpenGL, DirectSound, CoreVideo, CoreImage, CoreAudio, etc.) to access hardware without having to write a ton of varying specific drivers.

It's quite possible that you could be using an OS that doesn't support SMP and run a game that does. Granted it's not very practical overall (and I doubt you'd build a machine with dual processors and run a non-SMP enabled OS when an enabled solution exists)... but not everything always is done from a practicality standpoint.

Mac OS 7-9 didn't support SMP within the OS, but various applications had extensions written for them that did. Daystar's dual processor cards were often a booster for Photoshop and other multiprocessor-enabled programs where more grunt was desired even though for much of your general usage outside of specific enabled programs in OS 7-9, the second processor was largely dead weight.

[Moogs]

VA - P - O -R, VA - P - O -R

and vapor was its name-o.

[elmo]

Originally Posted by Dave IIRC, the NT kernel's SMP support was an add-on rather than an original design decision. I think. Maybe. Anywho, like I said, I don't know how true that statement is. (Yes, XP is based on NT.)

Dave, SMP has been a core part of the NT kernel for a long time now. Date back to Win NT v2. Now XP Home & XP Media Center is miss the SMP, but Microsoft wasn't planning on the averge person needing this. XP Pro is built to run single or dual just like Apple OS X. XP Pro has the ability for you to go in Tack Manager and sign processes to CPU's on a dual chip machine. So in theroy, you can have all the OS and all the background programs running on it own CPU and memory. Now you can run your application on it own CPU and memory. This is a nice little design decision built in XP Pro.