Dual Core proc

waiting for technology will never end, by that time the next big thing willl be coming and you will want to wait for it

My understanding is that it's basically two cpus on one chip - the next logical extension to hyperthreading, one might say. Advantages could be big if software takes advantage of it.

On laptops, I've heard the two cores are mainly used to reduce heat. One core will be active, and when it reaches a certain temp, it shuts down and the other core kicks in.

Lots of speculation right now - it's still too early to tell.

-Peter

I know i did a report on this a couple of weeks ago!

Its basically the same Idea as Hyperthreading; It can be described as a dual cpu system on one processor. Right Now IBM has already Manufactured a dual core processor for their server systems. AMD has the heads up over Intel because they have this thing called Hypertransport link, low latency bus thats fast as heck! They actually have more than one Hypertransport link built into their opteron processors so technically all you would need to do is do a processor swap and maybe a bios upgrade and you should be set, when they come out.
Why? Higher clockspeeds are getting harder and harder to attain, AMD has switched over to higher instruction set: 64bit. Intel has extended their pipelines: Prescott. This is only a quick fix though. The whole idea is not to do it faster but to do MORE of it Faster.
Couple of problems though; heat, power consumtion, higher clockspeeds, and software licensing! We all know about the heat, power consumption, and clockspeeds but what about the software licensing. Soft-companies are probably going to switch over to a per core license, but Microsoft says its not going to charge on a per core licence. They want to remain the same way its been and charge per processor...
This is also, IMO a step before Cell processors...

Feel free to ask me any questions or make me aware of any mistakes ive made!

You think Cell processors are more advanced?

From what ive heard of Dual Core, on the Intel camp, i know they're struggling to get it out on time with AMD's dual core solution. There have been rumours of dual core Northwoods and Dual core Dothans. The common theme is that with 2 cores, you get double the heat, more than what a conventional heatsink/fan combo will handle. Ive even heard of Intel suggesting a peltier based system to cool their new dual core solutions.

or we could just use that super-cooler that CPU_master has been raving about

i can just imagine intel shipping that as the stock heatsink/fan.

there goes most of thermalright's business right out the window

Intel I think is having the most trouble getting the darn thing out the door, Ive searched and found that their using the HOT prescott core. everybody here would think dothan or banias and so did everybody ive been talking too... Also I think they want to keep the 32bit instructions for desktops and 64bit for their servers, this might kill'em in someways.
This technology is supposed be released sometime in 2005, Cell is supposed to be released sometime in 2006 or future, but if you look at Cell, its many cores on one processor each core with its own specialized job. IMO Dual-core / Multi-core is the first step towards this goal..

OOOh think about dual/multi-core GPU video cards!
thad kill NVidia's SLI, thats one Idea for ATI!!! *wink *wink ATI!!!

Ahhh, well, there is no way affordable air cooling will work for a dual cored prescott based system. Those things generate over 100W of heat. Even if it's downclocked, that's still alot of heat. Will we be seeing the rise of watercooling to the mainstream?

Ive only seen reports of clocked CPU s to about 2.4 or 2.2 GHz, besides id rather have two of those puppies rather than 1 3.6 cpu. Take a look at Intel vs AMD, Higher clockspeeds don't always mean better... But advertising and marketing can change the public view on the technology perspective. Does or did AMD ever advertise on TV?

Definately, but if its still based on the prescott core, we're still looking at 2.2GHz 31 stage pipeline CPU, which is pretty crap. Prescotts were never the ones to perform well at lower clock speeds. Clock for clock, at the range of 2GHz - 3.4GHz the Northwood outperforms the Prescott. I dont see why Intel should be using a prescott core, why not an old style Northwood core? They generate much less heat.

With dual cores and hyper threading you will have 2 physical processors and 2 logical processors which makes it a quad processor system... Interesting, though i think one 3.6GHz CPU will beat a dual core 2.2GHz system in games due to most of them being single threaded.

I cant tell you why on that one, I still they their best bet is banias or dothan...

As for the thermal output.

But there is one huge problem with that suggestion. Firstly, Dothan and Banias suffer greatly when it comes to alot of the more system intensive desktop operations. It gets completely owned in many heavy arithmatic benchmarks, encoding, editing benchmarks and that. It's forte is gaming.

Secondly, it dosnt have hyper threading. A Dual core dothan is going to be basically a slightly ramped up Prescott (with hyper threading), except without it's exceptional content creation capabilities.

And just to remind you, Intel's main strength on the desktop segment is content creation.

Hyperthreading is more software side, not hardware. Dual core Pentium systems aren't going to have Hyperthreading enabled on them (so says intel), but I still say the dothan design has some great dual-core qualities.

AMD's Should (technically) because of their Opterons being built with a secondary Hypertransport link. Basically this allows the cores to talk to eachother better, low latency link and all; which can reduce the number of buses on a system. Also when they made the Opterons they didn't realize what they had! I dunno about Memmory Controllers but some processors now have them on the CPU itself, It depends on the motherboard manufacturer what memory they're going to use...