Quote Originally Posted by highlanddave
_Martyr_,

whyidie, what kind of computer are you running? i am guessing the quad core chip coming out is for us common users and that some buisnesses and research centers already have access to these chips.
Very much correct highlanddave. I throw it in the ring just as a reminder that innovation doesn't just happen with the two big consumer CPU makers.

This particular model is a T2000 from Sun Microsystems:

http://www.sun.com/servers/coolthreads/t2000/index.xml


Shared L2 cache is a bit of a crux at the moment, but in terms of how many cores can you throw on it, 8 is a high number! Plus it does do a pretty incredible job on low FPU, low cache transactions.

In terms of dedicated chips they are developing a processor that will have "NIC on a chip". Which translates to a more direct path to the CPU for network transactions. I'm not clear on the specifics of the architecture.

In a similar vein I think Fujitsu will be releasing a chip that will have a CPU dedicated to IO transactions.

So yes, specialization is on the way.