Intel's Dual Core Strategy Investigated
by Anand Lal Shimpi on October 22, 2004 3:09 PM EST- Posted in
- CPUs
Final Words
The best way to evaluate the impact of dual core CPUs on the desktop is to look at the impact by moving to a multiprocessor setup on the desktop. The vast majority of applications on the desktop are still single threaded, thus garnering no real performance benefit from moving to dual core. The areas that we saw improvements in thanks to Hyper Threading will see further performance improvements due to dual core on both AMD and Intel platforms, but in most cases buying a single processor running at a higher clock speed will end up yielding higher overall performance.
For the most part, it would seem that the dual core releases of 2005 are mostly to establish a foundation for future dual core CPU releases that will provide functionality such as power and thermal balancing across multiple cores. Next year Intel will be releasing a number of new processors, including the new 2MB L2 Prescott parts as well as the dual core x-series, but despite all of the new product launches, clock speeds will only increase by 200MHz in the next 14 months. If anything, the release of larger cache and dual core desktop processors is a way to continue to promote the "newer, faster, better" upgrades without necessarily improving performance all that much.
Today the slowest Prescott based Pentium 4s run at 2.8GHz and 3.0GHz - and a full year from now the slowest Prescott based Pentium 4s will run at 3GHz. This is the first time in recent history that the predicted roadmap for CPUs will remain relatively flat. It will take continued maturity in 90nm manufacturing, a smooth transition to 65nm as well as improvements in multi core designs to truly make the migration worth it.
The future of dual core doesn't lie in taking two identical cores and throwing them on the same die. The future and true potential is in the use of multiple cores with different abilities to help improve performance while keeping power consumption and thermal density at a minimum. The idea of putting two cores, one fast and one slow, in a CPU has already been proposed numerous times as a method of keeping power consumption low while continuing to improve performance.
Right now dual core is more of a manufacturing hurdle than anything else. Putting that many logic transistors on a single die without reducing yield is a tough goal. Intel will have a slightly harder time with the migration to dual core since their chips simply put our more heat, but in theory Intel has the superior manufacturing (although it's been very difficult to compare success at 90nm between AMD and Intel thanks to all of the variables Prescott introduced). Needless to say that we'd be very surprised if both companies met the current ship dates for dual core desktop chips simply based on how things have progressed in the past.
That being said, despite the end of 2005 being the time for dual core, the desktop world will be largely unchanged by its introduction. It will take application support more than anything to truly bring about performance improvements, but with an aggressive CPU ramp developers may be more inclined to invest in making their applications multithreaded as more users have dual core systems. The more we look at roadmaps, the more it seems like while 2005 will be the year of anticipation for dual core, 2006 may be when dual core actually gets interesting. Until then, we view dual core on the desktop as a nice way of getting attention away the fact that clock speeds aren't rising. It's a necessary move in order to gain more traction and support for multithreaded desktop applications but its immediate benefit to the end user will be limited. But then again, so has every other major architectural shift.
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HardwareD00d - Friday, October 22, 2004 - link
#16, The reason hyperthreading will be disabled with dual cores is because WindowsXP only support 2 processors right now. I'm not sure about Windows 2000, but Intel has said you should not enable HT with that OS.I heard that Intel is hoping that M$ makes a "patch" to XP so it will do 4 processors. AFAIK, Intel is waiting on that for the "official word" on HT in dual core.
thelanx - Friday, October 22, 2004 - link
So these are underclocked 3.8 prescotts? That could be prove to be a great overclock with water cooling maybe, as it'll be virtually garuanteed 3.8 GHz or more, just gotta make sure you've got adequate cooling.thelanx - Friday, October 22, 2004 - link
GhandiInstinct - Friday, October 22, 2004 - link
So for now it's just an advanced version of hyper-threading, instead of virtual cpus you have physical cpus, thanks Anand.sprockkets - Friday, October 22, 2004 - link
How are the 2 cpus connected with Intel? Why disable hyper-threading for having extra cores, oh well, guess it makes some sense. What then we could do is make 2 cores with a split amount of ALUs and FPUs.Jeff7181 - Friday, October 22, 2004 - link
#13... Water cooling won't be a necessity. Don't forget, with the increase in heat from dual cores there's also an increase in surface area for that heat to be dissipated through. I don't think you'll see a huge increase in CPU temperature at all. What WILL increase more is power requirements, and case temperate... as well as the temperature of the room the PC is in and probably the size of the heatsink.xsilver - Friday, October 22, 2004 - link
Anand, how did you measure power consumption from your last batch of reviews? hardware or software? links? thanksRegarding dual cores, aren't these cpu's going to be horrendously expensive to produce if they are basically 2x prescotts?-- and if there is 200w power consumption, isn't that mandatory water cooling territory?
Anand Lal Shimpi - Friday, October 22, 2004 - link
Jeff7181True, but I was mostly referring to 800MHz FSB chips, the 533MHz parts will still be available then too.
supertyler
You pretty much answered your own question there, monitoring user inputs are generally not CPU intensive tasks at all - in fact you could say that those tasks are mostly user limited :) A huge benefit to dual core (or SMP in general) is that if you have one renegade application that eats up a ton of CPU power, you still have a separate CPU that can continue to work for you during the interim. It is a tangible performance improvement, but one of few for desktop uses.
Marsumane
It's tough to say what's going on with AMD until we actually see more roadmaps. For now, they haven't increased clock speed all that much either, remember we're still at 2.6GHz at a maximum with the fastest non-FX Athlon 64 running at 2.4GHz. As far as building more fabs goes, they cost about $2.5B a piece and take quite a bit of time to build, I don't think that's exactly the quickest fix to the situation at hand :)
skunkbuster
Remember that Banias and Dothan are designed with clock speed limitations in mind, they need smaller manufacturing processes to actually reach higher clock speeds as they natively have very short ramping abilities. For more information take a look at my Banias or Dothan reviews.
GhandiInstinct
In a single threaded application, no they will not be any faster. In a game for example, two 3.2GHz cores will not be faster than a single 3.2GHz core.
Take care,
Anand
klah - Friday, October 22, 2004 - link
These will still be using 1.385V? If so, 200W+ power consumption?GhandiInstinct - Friday, October 22, 2004 - link
"The vast majority of applications on the desktop are still single threaded, thus garnering no real performance benefit from moving to dual core"Anand,
So two 3.2ghz cores will not be faster than one 3.2ghz core?