Intel Targets 32-Core Processors in 2010

Dominus Atheos · Post by **Dominus Atheos** » 2006-07-13 01:49am

The world’s main supplier of microprocessors, Intel Corp., plans to offer a central processing unit for servers, which will be 15 times faster compared to today’s chips and which will contain up to 32 processing engines, according to a media report. The processor code-named Gulftown will have “eight processing nodes” with four cores on each one, according to TG Daily web-site, which may mean that the chip will consist of several physical dice. Every die will sport four processing engines, 3MB unified level-three cache, while every core will have 512KB L2 cache. The dice will be connected to each other using “a ring architecture” interconnect technology.

Post by **Mr Bean** » 2006-07-13 10:59am

That's nice, how fast is it going to go? Since 3Ghtz just an't cutting it and multiple core software is still being worked on.

As it stands my AMD64 4800 X2's second CPU is not being fully used as it is, prehaps 30% of my second CPU's power is being used. How little benfit are we going to see after we start talking 10+ CPU's.

The only time I see both being used fully is with SETI and other similar style crunchers. I only see moderate benfit with day to day tasks(Computer responds faster) and only a slight benfit with gaming.

phongn · Post by **phongn** » 2006-07-13 11:44am

Mr Bean wrote:That's nice, how fast is it going to go? Since 3Ghtz just an't cutting it and multiple core software is still being worked on.

For the desktop, maybe. Server workloads often (but not always) are multithreaded.

As it stands my AMD64 4800 X2's second CPU is not being fully used as it is, prehaps 30% of my second CPU's power is being used. How little benfit are we going to see after we start talking 10+ CPU's.

Depends on the workloads.

The only time I see both being used fully is with SETI and other similar style crunchers. I only see moderate benfit with day to day tasks(Computer responds faster) and only a slight benfit with gaming.

Webserving often benefits from more cores. Did you even read the article and its referencing to server workloads?

Post by **Mr Bean** » 2006-07-13 11:52am

phongn wrote: Webserving often benefits from more cores. Did you even read the article and its referencing to server workloads?

Yes it references servers, that never stoped people for using server CPU's for home systems. And keep in mind that server markets(At least where Intel is concerned) have always been bigger more powerful Desktop CPU's. Thus for the top in preformance, people have gotten server CPU's for home systems.

Unless you wish to suggest that Intel won't go this way with it's desktop cpu's as well(IE multiple, multiple cores).

Praxis · Post by **Praxis** » 2006-07-13 11:57am

IMHO 3 GHz is cutting it with the new improvements in Intel's lineup. The fact that a 2 GHz Core Single AFAIK is similar in performance to a 3 GHz Pentium 4...and that's Yonah...a dual core 3 GHz Conroe, Merom, or Santa Rosa sounds quite nice.

I expect Windows Vista will have better SMP support than Windows XP, so I'm sure it'll be used. IIRC Linux and Mac OS X alread have support for that many processors.

And by 2010, most if not all of our software will be multithreaded. Except for legacy stuff.

phongn · Post by **phongn** » 2006-07-13 12:17pm

Mr Bean wrote:Yes it references servers, that never stoped people for using server CPU's for home systems. And keep in mind that server markets(At least where Intel is concerned) have always been bigger more powerful Desktop CPU's.

Itanium is hardly a bigger and more powerful desktop CPU. The server varients of Core (NGMA) also scale to more cores then their desktop counterparts.

Thus for the top in preformance, people have gotten server CPU's for home systems.

Who? I don't know many performance enthusiasts running Xeon or Opteron (S240) machines.

Unless you wish to suggest that Intel won't go this way with it's desktop cpu's as well(IE multiple, multiple cores).

They will, but maybe 2-4 way, not 32 on the desktop.

Praxis wrote:I expect Windows Vista will have better SMP support than Windows XP, so I'm sure it'll be used. IIRC Linux and Mac OS X alread have support for that many processors.

Windows XP Home has support for one physical processor (I'm guessing up to 2 cores is supported, perhaps even four). XP Pro has two-socket support; the server varients more.

Durandal · Post by **Durandal** » 2006-07-13 03:04pm

Mr Bean wrote:Yes it references servers, that never stoped people for using server CPU's for home systems. And keep in mind that server markets(At least where Intel is concerned) have always been bigger more powerful Desktop CPU's. Thus for the top in preformance, people have gotten server CPU's for home systems.

He's talking about actual server systems, not shit hobbyists can get their hands on to build a small web server. In the real server systems, you'll very frequently see 32- and 64-way configurations. Itaniums, Opterons and Xeons (nevermind the POWER or UltraSPARC series) aren't conventionally run on desktop systems, even in hobbyist circles.

Unless you wish to suggest that Intel won't go this way with it's desktop cpu's as well(IE multiple, multiple cores).

Of course they'll gravitate toward more cores. But that doesn't mean that desktop systems are going to have 32-way systems in 2010.

Post by **Beowulf** » 2006-07-13 03:08pm

I've heard of the very lowest end (1 way) Opterons being used in a hobbyist machine, due solely to the fact that it was cheaper than a Athlon 64, at the time. Never heard of anyone using Xeons or Itaniums.

Uraniun235 · Post by **Uraniun235** » 2006-07-13 03:26pm

Opterons and Xeons are basically just high-quality versions of Athlon and Pentium chips. The Itanium series is actually a completely different chip altogether.

phongn · Post by **phongn** » 2006-07-15 02:22pm

Beowulf wrote:I've heard of the very lowest end (1 way) Opterons being used in a hobbyist machine, due solely to the fact that it was cheaper than a Athlon 64, at the time. Never heard of anyone using Xeons or Itaniums.

Yeah, I use an Opteron 165 - the initial S939 Opteron pricing was very good until AMD realized they were undercutting their Athlon sales in the enthusiast market.

Uraniun235 wrote:Opterons and Xeons are basically just high-quality versions of Athlon and Pentium chips. The Itanium series is actually a completely different chip altogether.

Still, Opteron (2XX and higher) and Xeon are not quite the same as their desktop counterparts.

Count Dooku · Post by **Count Dooku** » 2006-07-15 02:58pm

Does anyone else want to see a water-cooled Core Duo at 5GHz???

Uraniun235 · Post by **Uraniun235** » 2006-07-15 03:02pm

phongn wrote:
Uraniun235 wrote:Opterons and Xeons are basically just high-quality versions of Athlon and Pentium chips. The Itanium series is actually a completely different chip altogether.
Still, Opteron (2XX and higher) and Xeon are not quite the same as their desktop counterparts.

What other differences are there? Besides more cache (IIRC the Xeons have buttloads of cache) and multi-processor support, that is.

phongn · Post by **phongn** » 2006-07-15 03:13pm

Uraniun235 wrote:What other differences are there? Besides more cache (IIRC the Xeons have buttloads of cache) and multi-processor support, that is.

Opteron's multiprocessor support comes from the addition of two extra HyperTransport channels and its memory controller is more sophisticated (supporting registered and ECC memory).

Xeon has varied throughout the years to being more-or-less a rebranded Pentium to having various changes here and there often to support multiple processor configurations. Newer Xeons, for example, have hardware virtualization support and the Xeon MP had quite a few extra features considered important to the sever market (a quick summary can be found here)