intel announces quad cores for november

[Xiahou]

It is especially irksome when you consider that most games don't take advantage of multi-threading. Games are the most cpu intensive and resource hungry applications out there and yet developers are seemingly dragging their collective tails in exploiting this CPU technology to the fullest. This draws a stark contrast to the industry's obsession with incorporating the latest and greatest 3D rendering techniques into their games.

When you think about it, there's nothing to complain about being able to multi-task while playing your favorite game at buttery smooth framerates. However it would be really nice if that second CPU core could also be utilized for things like in-game physics calculations or to improve the AI routines.

The question in my mind is: Why the hell are we supposed to start buying seperate physics cards when we have dual and soon-to-be quad core chips that are only using a fraction of their capacity in terms of gaming?
Screw physics cards and start using the available processing power.

[Papewaio]

Not all chips are equal.

Some have specialised functions so that if everything else was equal the specialist chip will out perform an equivalent generalist chip.

CPUs are the generalists... Maths co-processors, GPUs and physics cards are the specialists... I do think with time if something becomes common place the functions are added to the general chip set/board (sound, maths) etc.

[Xiahou]

Here we go:

Intel's Extreme chip products are aimed at hard-core gamers who want every smidgen of performance, and game producers are working to adapt their software. One such company is Remedy, which demonstrated a game called "Alan Wake" at the Intel show.

The game is designed to farm tasks to different processor cores, said Markus Maki, director of development, in an interview. There are three major program threads and each can occupy a core of its own: one for the main game action, one for simulating physics of game objects and one for preparing terrain information that's later sent to the graphics chip for rendering. A fourth core can handle other threads, including playing sound and retrieving data from a DVD, Maki said.

link

I'd much rather see multi-threaded games that take advantage of multi-core cpus than being expected to lay out the extra cash for a physics card that you have to cram into a slot in your case.

[LeftEyeNine]

Where is the end of this line?

I mean I feel like a stupid to be seeing that the next innovation will be octo cores, then sixteen cores and so on.

This kind of marketing is purely making fool of the customer: let's add another pair and find a mysterious code name for the CPU and get the money.

my ***

[Lemur]

Where is the end of this line?

I mean I feel like a stupid to be seeing that the next innovation will be octo cores, then sixteen cores and so on.

Um, you're pretty much spot-on. Intel aims for 32 cores by 2010.

[LeftEyeNine]

Um, you're pretty much spot-on. Intel aims for 32 cores by 2010.

How innovative. CPU architects now know how to count numbers in computer terms.

[Spino]

Where is the end of this line?

I mean I feel like a stupid to be seeing that the next innovation will be octo cores, then sixteen cores and so on.

This kind of marketing is purely making fool of the customer: let's add another pair and find a mysterious code name for the CPU and get the money.

my ***

Actually you're wrong about the 'making a fool of the consumer' stuff... well, sort of.

Yes, essentially this all comes down to making money and seeing how much of it consumers are willing to spend in order to have the latest and greatest widget. However, it is AMD's existence coupled with its ever increasing market share which has forced both it and Intel to pour oodles of cash into R&D so as to keep churning out new and improved processor designs which allow them to stay competitive with one another. It may be frustrating to be caught amidst a processor (or GPU) war that doesn't offer much breathing room for the performance minded consumer but this anxiety should be offset by the fact that consumers can buy a reasonably fast processor for surprisingly little money (relative of course to what processors used to cost back when AMD was a minor player in the x86 market).

Multi-core processors are the next logical step in the equation as far as existing chip technology is concerned and there's no turning back. In order to address issues such as heat and the physical limitations of manipulating silicon and other materials at the nanometer level chip makers simply had to turn to multi-core designs. Creating processors which sport multiple cpu cores allow AMD and Intel to continue to increase performance while avoiding the problems associated with producing single core chips which run at ridiculously high speeds, consume tons of power and generate lots of heat.

Last but not least, as that article pointed out, multi-core processors are a good thing as far as game development is concerned. I'd much prefer to have a reasonably priced multi-core processor which can delegate tasks related to physics, AI, etc. to each of its cores instead of being forced to plunk down a serious chunk of change for dedicated, specialized add-in cards.

[_Martyr_]

Terascaling... its the future.

http://www.pcper.com/article.php?aid=302

[whyidie]

Eight cores the future ? The future is now!

Location CPU Freq Implementation
-------------------------------------------------------
Core 0: MB/CMP0/P0 0 1200 MHz SUNW,UltraSPARC-T1
MB/CMP0/P1 1 1200 MHz SUNW,UltraSPARC-T1
MB/CMP0/P2 2 1200 MHz SUNW,UltraSPARC-T1
MB/CMP0/P3 3 1200 MHz SUNW,UltraSPARC-T1


Core 1: MB/CMP0/P4 4 1200 MHz SUNW,UltraSPARC-T1
MB/CMP0/P5 5 1200 MHz SUNW,UltraSPARC-T1
MB/CMP0/P6 6 1200 MHz SUNW,UltraSPARC-T1
MB/CMP0/P7 7 1200 MHz SUNW,UltraSPARC-T1


Core 2: MB/CMP0/P8 8 1200 MHz SUNW,UltraSPARC-T1
MB/CMP0/P9 9 1200 MHz SUNW,UltraSPARC-T1
MB/CMP0/P10 10 1200 MHz SUNW,UltraSPARC-T1
MB/CMP0/P11 11 1200 MHz SUNW,UltraSPARC-T1


Core 3: MB/CMP0/P12 12 1200 MHz SUNW,UltraSPARC-T1
MB/CMP0/P13 13 1200 MHz SUNW,UltraSPARC-T1
MB/CMP0/P14 14 1200 MHz SUNW,UltraSPARC-T1
MB/CMP0/P15 15 1200 MHz SUNW,UltraSPARC-T1


Core 4: MB/CMP0/P16 16 1200 MHz SUNW,UltraSPARC-T1
MB/CMP0/P17 17 1200 MHz SUNW,UltraSPARC-T1
MB/CMP0/P18 18 1200 MHz SUNW,UltraSPARC-T1
MB/CMP0/P19 19 1200 MHz SUNW,UltraSPARC-T1


Core 5: MB/CMP0/P20 20 1200 MHz SUNW,UltraSPARC-T1
MB/CMP0/P21 21 1200 MHz SUNW,UltraSPARC-T1
MB/CMP0/P22 22 1200 MHz SUNW,UltraSPARC-T1
MB/CMP0/P23 23 1200 MHz SUNW,UltraSPARC-T1


Core 6: MB/CMP0/P24 24 1200 MHz SUNW,UltraSPARC-T1
MB/CMP0/P25 25 1200 MHz SUNW,UltraSPARC-T1
MB/CMP0/P26 26 1200 MHz SUNW,UltraSPARC-T1
MB/CMP0/P27 27 1200 MHz SUNW,UltraSPARC-T1


Core 7: MB/CMP0/P28 28 1200 MHz SUNW,UltraSPARC-T1
MB/CMP0/P29 29 1200 MHz SUNW,UltraSPARC-T1
MB/CMP0/P30 30 1200 MHz SUNW,UltraSPARC-T1
MB/CMP0/P31 31 1200 MHz SUNW,UltraSPARC-T1

So for those counting along, thats one chip with 8 cores, which can handle 4 threads. So thats up to 32 simultanoues processing threads. Right now.