Maximum PC multicore RSS Feed

Rumor: Intel to Release Six Core Nehalem in 2009

Paul Lilly — Fri, 12 Jun 2009 09:00:22 -0500

File this one under unconfirmed, but word on the web is that Intel plans to release a six-core Nehalem chip before the end of the year. Citing "sources close to Intel," Bit-tech says existing X58 motherboard owners should be able to drop the new chip into their motherboard with only a BIOS update, giving current Core i7 owners a tantalizing upgrade path to look forward to.

Not much else is known about the supposed six-core Nehalem, however those same sources did say the new chip won't fall into the Core i7 naming scheme. The name is still being worked out

Should this come to fruition, Intel would be the first to market with a six-core consumer desktop CPU. AMD earlier this month released a six-core part well ahead of schedule, but it's a server chip and not a desktop part. Intel also has an existing six-core processor in Xeon form, also intended for servers.

Intel to Ship 8-Core Server Processors Later this Fall

Paul Lilly — Wed, 27 May 2009 09:57:37 -0500

Intel this week said its Nehalem-EX processor, an 8-core beast of a chip, will go into production sometime later this year and start shipping in server systems by early 2010. Even better, each chip supports 16 threads, says Boy Davis, Intel's GM of the Server Platforms Marketing Group.

Already on-board is IBM, who is already developing a server based around Nehalem-EX. The server will hold eight processors, making use of 64 Nehalem-EX cores capable of handling 128 threads.

"We're very excited today to be the first to demonstrate Nehalem-EX," said Alex Yost, VP IBM BladeCenter.

In addition to more cores and threads, Nehalem-EX also ups the memory ante, doubling the capacity with up to 16 memory slots per processor socket.

Image Credit: Intel

Updated AMD Roadmap Points to 16-Core CPU

Paul Lilly — Thu, 23 Apr 2009 10:02:11 -0500

In a press release issued yesterday, AMD laid out a few surprises in its server platform roadmap that the company says are "game-changing," and perhaps indicative of a new-look AMD focused on design without the burden of manufacturing. We have to admit we like what we're seeing, starting with the announcement that the new monolithic six-core Opteron, code named Istanbul, will be released this June months ahead of schedule. But that's only the beginning.

AMD also announced a new integrated memory controller technology, Direct Connect Architecture 2.0, which it says will support up to 12 cores initially, offer improved memory and I/O capabilities, near native virtualization performance, and a range of full-featured power bands that place a priority on low power consumption.

But wait, there's more! In 2010, AMD says it will ship the Opteron 6000 series for 2P and 4P servers. The Magny-Cours processors will come in 8-core and 12-core flavors debuting on the G34 socket and the Maranello platform. And then in 2011, AMD will introduce the Interlagos 12- and 16-core processor based on the Bulldozer core and built on a 32nm manufacturing process.

Here's hoping AMD will show this same aggressiveness on the desktop.

Image Credit: AMD

Multicore Chips Pose Challenge for PC Industry as Single-Core Software Still Dominates Market

Paul Lilly — Mon, 23 Mar 2009 16:10:40 -0500

Unlike the chicken and the egg, in today's multicore environment, we can definitively say the hardware came first, and we're beginning to wonder if the software will ever come at all. We're not referring to the handful of games and applications that are multicore friendly, but the widespread development of software to take advantage of multiple cores.

So what's the holdup? According to participants at last week's Multicore Expo in Santa Clara, California, programming challenges remain. While there's no shortage of multicore processors in the wild, much of the software being written is still being geared towards single-core computing.

"Looking at the specifications for these software products, it is clear that many will be challenged to support the hardware configurations possible today and those that will be accelerating in the future," said Carl Claunch, vice president and distinguished analyst at Gartner. "The impact is akin to putting a Ferrari engine in a go-cart; the power may be there, but design mismatches severely limit the ability to exploit it."

The above statement comes from a report Gartner released two months ago. In it, Claunch goes on to explain that the software running today's servers have both hard and soft limits on the number of processors the software can effectively handle, the latter of which requires trial and error to overcome.

Parallel computing may seem like a no-brainer, but programmers point to the potential of new types of software bugs and lack of programming tools. On the bright side, more tools are emerging, and both Intel and AMD have made it clear that the future of computing lies in multiple cores. That future will be realized once software development catches up to the hardware.

So Team Fortress 2 Heard You Like Multicore Support

Nathan Grayson — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 03:54:10 -0500

Other Valve games, we’re sure you’re great and all, but we think Valve is playing favorites. Really, just look at the numbers: Left 4 Dead, Valve’s tossing you just enough of the ol’ meat and mead to ensure your survival. And Half-Life 2: Episode 3, we thought we saw you once in a tabloid with Bigfoot, but that might’ve just been this guy. Meanwhile, it seems like Team Fortress 2 gains some new appendage at least once per week, and, well, you can probably guess where this is going.

This week’s TF2 to-do adds multicore CPU rendering to the team-based shooter’s ever-growing repertoire, though it’s apparently not quite ready for primetime just yet. From the patch notes:

Added Multicore Rendering

This initial release is aimed at testing compatibility, so the option is OFF by default
To turn it on, go to the Options->Video->Advanced dialog, and check the "Multicore Rendering" option

Well, that’s all for now, TF2 fans. See you guys and gals next week.

AMD Fires Back at Intel with 6-Core Opteron

Paul Lilly — Tue, 24 Feb 2009 09:33:47 -0600

AMD Socket F (1207) Opteron owners have reason to rejoice, as it looks like the chip maker's upcoming Istanbul chip is on target for a 2H 2009 release and won't require any new hardware. A 6-core chip built on a 45nm manufacturing process with 6MB of L3 cache, Istanbul will go head-to-head with Intel's 6-core Dunnington-based Xeon released in September 2008. AMD had some heavy criticism for Dunnington following its release, saying it's just a glued together triple-dual core processor with 50 percent more cores than the quad-core and costing 50 percent more, among other complaints.

We'll have to wait for Istanbul's release to see how it stacks up against Intel's 6-core solution, but in the meantime, AMD did demonstrate a 24-core Istanbul configuration pitted against a 16-core Shanghai rig using the same parts, both with HyperTransport 3 enabled. With 50 percent more cores, the Istanbul machine produced almost double the bandwidth at 42,000 MB/s versus 25,000 MB/s for the Shanghai setup.

No pricing information or release date has yet been given, although AMD is planning on offering both lower-power HE and high performance SE models.

Image Credit: Tech Report

Daily News Brief: AMD Updates Roadmap, 12-Core Processors on Horizon

One4yu2c — Fri, 09 May 2008 16:48:48 -0500

AMD Nixes 8-Core Processors

According to AMD's recently updated roadmap, the chipmaker plans to jump from a 6-core chip (Istanbul) to 12 cores (Magny-Cours) in 2010, killing earlier plans to release 8-core processors. The dodeca-core part, which is being targeted at servers, will feature 12MB of L3 cache and support DDR3 RAM on a 45nm manufacturing process. More details here.

Cooler Xbox 360 Coming in August

It won't sport a Blu-ray player no matter how many rumors say otherwise, but you can expect Microsoft to release a cooler running Xbox 360 console late this summer, which should help reduce the inordinate amount of Red Ring of Death fatalities. The new version, code named Jasper, will shrink both the GPU and North Bridge down from 90nm to 65nm, matching the size of the recently shrunken CPU found in the Falcon refresh.

Social Network Hopping

Have you grown weary of MySpace and seek new adventures and possible LTR with other social networking sites? 'No problem!,' says MySpace, who Thursday announced it will start letting users automatically transfer profile information to other social networking sites. MySpace plans to kick off the "data availability" project in the coming weeks by letting members share profile information with Yahoo, Ebay, Photobucket, and Twitter. And what about Facebook? MySpace says that's a possibility. Much more here.

Underground Economy

All those phishing attempts and virus-laced emails are much more than a hobby, and help support an dark underground economy run by digital thieves. Ever wonder what your bank account would be worth to these crooks? In a startling blog post, McAfee answers that question. The author claims to have uncovered one such site selling stolen accounts and posted a screenshot. The seller even offers certain guarantees, such as a replacement policy if the buyer is unable to log on to the stolen account within 24 hours. Take a look here.

DRM Still Alive and Kicking?

The RIAA thinks so, and doesn't seem too concerned with the recent trend towards DRM-free MP3 files for sale. "(Recently) I made a list of the 22 ways to sell music, and 20 of them still require DRM," noted David Huges, head of the RIAA's technology unit. The RIAA sees DRM reemerging in a big way as part of forthcoming subscription services, and will push to keep it alive.

Mozilla Pulls Dirty Language Pack

Firefox's Vietnamese language pack offered on Mozilla's official add-ons site was recently discovered to be contaminated with a Trojan Horse after sitting for months unnoticed. Because the virus' signature was unknown at the time of posting, it passed Mozilla's in-house testing. Mozilla has since been pulled the language pack, and to prevent similar incidents from happening again, Mozilla has vowed to re-scan all add-ons whenever they update their virus signatures, and not just when originally posted.

Fast Forward: The Future of CPU Integration

Tom Halfhill — Wed, 05 Dec 2007 16:07:26 -0600

For years now, AMD has been crowing about the integrated DDR controller in its processors— something Intel’s chips don’t have. Integrating the memory controller with the CPU definitely has performance advantages, but what’s the next step in CPU integration?

For clues, consider Sun Microsystems’s new server processor, the UltraSPARC T2 (code-named Niagara 2). The first thing everyone notices about this “server on a chip” is that it has eight 64-bit processor cores—twice as many cores as the best server processors from AMD and Intel. In addition, each core can simultaneously run eight threads of execution—four times as many threads per core as the best Hyper-Threading processor ever shipped by Intel.

With eight processor cores per chip and eight threads per core, the UltraSPARC T2 can simultaneously execute 64 threads. Using Sun’s virtualization extensions, a single chip can run 64 different operating systems (or 64 instances of the same operating system) at the same time. Because each core runs at 1.4GHz, Sun likens the chip’s aggregate CPU performance to a single-threaded chip running at 89.6GHz—a stretch of the truth, but impressive nonetheless.

However, I consider the chip’s other integrated features even more impressive. The UltraSPARC T2 has four integrated memory controllers, two 10-gigabit Ethernet controllers, an eight-lane PCI Express controller, and eight cryptography accelerators. Each dual-channel memory controller supports Fully Buffered (FB) DIMMs. The Ethernet controllers are multithreaded independently of the processors, so their actual throughput should handily beat an external Ethernet solution. The PCI Express interface runs at 2.5GHz, nearly twice as fast as the processor cores. The eight crypto engines support the most common security algorithms (such as DES and AES) and are much faster than general-purpose CPUs at this kind of number crunching.

Sun isn’t exaggerating much by calling the UltraSPARC T2 a server on a chip. And despite its unprecedented level of integration for a server processor, it consumes less than 100W and starts at less than $1,000. But the most interesting thing about the UltraSPARC T2 is what it foretells about x86 PC processors in terms of multicore integration, massive multithreading, and peripheral integration. Eventually, I believe, AMD and Intel will go with the flow of this Niagara.

Tom Halfhill was formerly a senior editor for Byte magazine and is now an analyst for Microprocessor Report.