Preview of Intel's Dual-Core Extreme Edition 289
ThinSkin writes "Intel let ExtremeTech.com sneak behind the curtain of its anticipated Dual-Core Pentium Extreme Edition processor for a full performance preview with benchmarks. Bundled with essentially two Prescott cores on one die, the Extreme Edition 840 processor clocks at 3.2GHz and contains a beefed-up power management system to keep the CPUs running cool during use. Expect Intel's dual-core line to hit the streets sometime this quarter. No word on pricing yet." Update: 04/04 17:26 GMT by T : Timmus points out FiringSquad's preview, too, writing "The benchmark results are mixed, with a few applications taking advantage of the new CPU, and some that don't." And Kez writes in reference to this article to say: "Our article on HEXUS.net, covering the P4 EE in detail, states the price as £650 (that's what we're looking at in the UK anyway, not sure about the U.S.)."
How well does it do... (Score:5, Funny)
On SlashMark? Namely, how many seconds does it take to compile the Linux kernel? :P
Re:How well does it do... (Score:5, Funny)
if you press the 'turbo' button it goes twice as fast.
Re:How well does it do... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:How well does it do... (Score:5, Funny)
Ahem. (Score:5, Funny)
hawk
Re:How well does it do... (Score:2)
Like, Extreme, to the, like, totally max! (Score:5, Insightful)
"Yeah, by today's standards it's EXTREMELY slow!"
"Only dual core, ha ha ha ha hah!"
I guess they can't very well call it 840i, as they've already used that for a chipset, but maybe Intel should stick to names ending with -ium and -on instead of something which timelessly proclaims some chunk of doped silicon as superior.
Next up from Intel, the Ultra-Spifftronic-Wowee-Zappo Triple Core, with extra schmaltz!
Re:Like, Extreme, to the, like, totally max! (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Like, Extreme, to the, like, totally max! (Score:2)
I think it's supposed to be 'Extremeron'.
Re:Like, Extreme, to the, like, totally max! (Score:5, Insightful)
I feel bad for the engineers who come up with these designs which are then crapped on by their marketting department.
Re:Like, Extreme, to the, like, totally max! (Score:3, Interesting)
Which probably has a lot to do with the success of the Dilbert strip.
This morning, on the way in to work, the BBC World Service had another feature on managment (flavor-of-the-day) trends. I suppose marketting does the same thing, but nobody has actually put their finger on it, yet.
Re:Like, Extreme, to the, like, totally max! (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Like, Extreme, to the, like, totally max! (Score:3, Funny)
Re:I don't feel bad at all (Score:2)
But seriously chip designers have to have knowledge of EE as well as quantum physics. The education requirements are extremly demanding, and there few in the world truly capable of doing the work. 120,000 a year is almost embarassingly low if you are talking about chip design.
Re:Like, Extreme, to the, like, totally max! (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Like, Extreme, to the, like, totally max! (Score:5, Funny)
Crow: Hey Mike!
Tom: Hi Mike!
Mike: What's going on?
Tom: EXTREME! That's what's going on Mike!
Crow: Yeah, Mike! You should try it!
Mike: Extreme what exactly?
Crow: Well, take me for example. I'm into extreme Yoga... SURRRRRRGE!!!!
Tom: And I'm into philatily. I own you Venezulea 1947! Extreeeme postage! Woo!
Crow: Now have you thought about what you'd like to be extreme about, Mike?
Tom: No fear, Miguel.
Mike: I'm not really extre...oh, you know what? I really like rice.
Crow: Ahh, well, EXTREME... RICE!!
Tom: Rice! Thermo nuclear protection! Wooo!
Crow: Yeah! See, Mike. Isn't rice better when it's extreme?
Mike: Sure is, uh, we'll be right back.
Crow: WAAAOOO!!
Tom: Haaaaaa!!
Sweet! (Score:4, Funny)
Holy Cow... (Score:4, Funny)
If the processors that big how the heck will I fit it on my motherboard?!
Re:Holy Cow... (Score:5, Funny)
Well, the processor itself only takes a few square inches - The rest of the box held the liquid nitrogen cooling system needed to keep the thing slightly cooler than the surface of the sun.
Re:Holy Cow... (Score:2, Funny)
That was the heatsink. The processor and motherboard were in a small brown box being crushed beneath it (as dictated by Galactic Shipping Directive 4.07a(7ii)
Re:Holy Cow... (Score:2, Funny)
Simple. You don't fit the processor on the motherboard, you fit the motherboard on the processor.
Just don't forget to reinforce the desk.
Cool?!? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Cool?!? (Score:2, Interesting)
Don't forget the 50 Gigawatt power supply!
The processor alone consumes (last I heard) about 100 watts and if it's essentially two processors in one, will require a really really good power supply. That means to use this proc, you'll instantly need 100 extra watts out of your power supply.
If they have to have power management to keep it from meltdown, just how much more computing CAN you get out of it anyway? To me the seco
Re:Cool?!? (Score:2)
holy crap...
We're starting to get into the range of *NEW HOUSE WIRING REQUIRED* for computers.
And most people don't need much more than what's in my pocketPC to do their email/wrd proc. hehe.
Re:Cool?!? (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Cool?!? (Score:3, Informative)
Of course, here in the UK, mains voltage is 230V, so with a normal maximum of 13A we could go up to about 2760W.
Re:Cool?!? (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Cool?!? (Score:3, Interesting)
With Dell, it's pick any two day. Well, actually, pick one.
We have a dual g5 tower that you can't tell is on and it crunches numbers faster than the intel xeon preceision 650's from dell. Which are Loud! and Hot!.
The air is barely warm at the back of the g5.
That's not a "Hey ! Look at me!" featurism. It's a "Hey! I was designed properly and you can ignore me!" featurism.
130W (Score:2)
130W design power consumption [pcmag.com], impressive number, right?
On the other hand, Free scale e600 dual core [freescale.com] has a power budget of 15W.
If I am the designer of next hybrid car, I go after the second one.
How about (Score:4, Informative)
Re:How about (Score:3)
Shush! You're taking the glimmer off the chrome, just as Intel, in a slap-dash manner, try to recapture some sort of legitimacy after getting spanked by AMD, right after totally dissing 64 bits.
You hear a tinny voice say, "32 bits should
Re:How about (Score:2)
It was quite a strategy show boating X64 while the memory controller silently kicked ass.
Re:How about (Score:3, Funny)
Care to elaborate on the difference?
Re:How about (Score:2)
In the Intel world they all share the northbridge.
Now think about "cache coherancy"...
Tom
Re:How about (Score:5, Informative)
http://www.anandtech.com/memory/showdoc.aspx?i=20
See the last paragraph
Re:How about (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:How about (Score:5, Interesting)
So cpu 2 and cpu 3 could talk and not get in the way of cpu 1 and the memory bus. Yes, there is "northbridge" for memory but there still is a memory bus. The Intel cpus have no dedicated bus and ALL talk over the same bus.
Not having either combo of boxes I can't tell you which is faster but usually AMD is much faster than Intel just on the pure "not being a Ghz pusher".
Tom
Re:How about (Score:2)
Re:How about (Score:2)
The point is
TheRe is but OnE ShaReD Memory buS which is a bottle NeCk if used foR Cache coherancy aNd memoRY access Holy fuck, comprehend much?
Tom
Re:How about (Score:2)
Re:How about (Score:5, Informative)
Care to elaborate on the difference?
Typically what they mean is that Intel's design is not functionally different than having two distinct processors as you would in a typical SMP setup.
If you look at the diagrams on the second page of the article, you'll see there's no direct communications between the two cores on die. If the two cores want to check cache coherency or system resouces access it's arbitrated over the sytem bus.
AMD uses a 'System Request Interface' that all cores on a die will connect to. There's actually local communcations between the two cores. You don't have to hop onto the system bus (or HTT link in this case) to request something that's sitting right next to you. This really only works well since Opteron is a NUMA architecture to begin with, you don't have to go snooping around to see who else is using the data because unless the local SRI has 'checked it out' you have exclusive access, and you don't need to verify that.
Re:How about (Score:4, Informative)
Nobody has EVER used the term 'dual-core' to describe dual-processor SMP. Dual-core has always been in reference to two cores on one chip.
Re:How about (Score:3, Funny)
and now [slashdot.org]:
I was under the impression that dual-core was two processors (two cores) mounted on one chip - i.e. one chip with two cores. Whereas what you referred to in your first post was called dual-processor, albeit also dual core.
Re:How about (Score:2)
And I'm pretty sure you aren't person of interest concerning processor design. This would be akin to me saying that HTTP really means hyper terminal turbo popper. I might work literally, but everybody knows I'm full of shit.
The literal definition of the phrase is difference than its widely-accepted meaning. Is that so hard to understand?
Instead of having to repeatedly say "two processor cores on a single processor die," someone coined the term 'dual-core.'
The meaning has alwa
Re:How about (Score:2)
Re:How about (Score:3, Informative)
No, they are like winesap and mcintosh apples.
two cpus are two cpus.. the OS sees them and uses them as it does other resources. dual core the OS does not see, the cpu employs the two cores to execute more pipelines in parallel.
Then why is it that I am posting from a dual core workstation [hp.com] and top shows two distinct CPUs?
Re:How about (Score:2, Insightful)
I would also like to say that I don't know anything about AMD's offering of dual-core, so I can't comment on why their way is better. I'm sure it is, because AMD's way is always better, but I don't actually have proof of that.
That comment pretty much says it all about your experience in this field.
Re:How about (Score:2)
Re:How about (Score:3, Funny)
And I doubt if intel marketing would appreciate that very much.
He would then find himself cut off and unable to make these "preview" articles.
Re:How about (Score:4, Funny)
Die vs. core (Score:3, Interesting)
You are correct. A "two die module" would have two separate pieces of silicon, interconnected through one of several techniques.
But this is /., where you're supposed to cheer for
AMD and mock everything Intel ever does.
Just remember this, and you can get lots of 'Informative'
mod points, even if you don't understand even the
most basic terms of chip manufacturing. At
least that's what I can figure by looking at what
gets modded up around here.
Re:CPU and GPU on One Die (Score:3, Interesting)
There may be a niche market for this, handheld devices and the likes, but not for the general computing market.
Re:How about (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:How about (Score:3, Insightful)
There is also a new dual-core error correction (Score:5, Funny)
Ketchup (Score:2, Interesting)
But, who knows? Intel seems to be shipping first. And we all know, Real Artists Ship.
Ketchup on their face (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Ketchup on their face (Score:2)
Re:Ketchup on their face (Score:2)
Are you so sure that that cross licensing arrangement covers technologies that are subsequently developed? Forever and ever? Or does it only cover existing technologies at the time of the agreement?
Re:Ketchup on their face (Score:3, Insightful)
The real story here is what caused Intel to agree to a license agreement to begin with. They actually were caught with their pants down on this one. They had reverse engineered everything and attempted to move forward with their reverse enginee
Re:Ketchup on their face (Score:3, Insightful)
Thanks for naming the instruction sets that I mentioned. I could not remember the nam
Re:Ketchup (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Ketchup (Score:2)
the original poster said
> AMD has been working on their dual-core offering for a year longer than Intel. AMD is a year ahead in development.
intel is shipping a product, AMD is not.
nost likely the intel was rushed and may suck (i'm not really that much of processor fanboy). to insist that they are following when they where the ones that shipped first is kind of retarded.
Re:Ketchup (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Ketchup (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Ketchup (Score:5, Informative)
Re: sharing I/O bandwidth. Intel has to do this because they don't have a built-in MCH. It has *nothing* to do with "selling chips with 2 normal P4 dies on them".
Re: Amd's offering. AMD doesn't have to change their design because they have a MCH onboard. That's why the number of pins can remain the same. On the flip side, if you change memory type, you'll have to throw away the chip. It's called engineering tradeoffs, and both companies do it.
Arrgh... practically every point in the above post is misleading or wrong, and it get's modded to +5.
Re:Ketchup (Score:5, Informative)
Ok, the two dies on one chip was true, or believed to be true when they first demoed:
Source: http://www.xbitlabs.com/news/cpu/display/20040915
I'll concede that point to you - that Intel is now putting 2 cores on a die... however they were never engineered to work that way initially. They only have an 800 MHZ FSB, not 1066 like the newer P4's, so they have even less bandwidth to share. Want a source?? Here:
Source: http://www.anandtech.com/printarticle.aspx?i=2252 [anandtech.com]
As far as my other points go, let's go over them, shall we???
"the new dual core P4s won't be compatible with a majority of Intel boards on the market"
Source: http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=21793 [theinquirer.net]
"The two cores use hyper transport to communicate with various system devices"
Source: http://www.amd.com/us-en/0,,3715_11787,00.html [amd.com]
It actually uses a cross-bar to handle the switching as well.
"Now for the best part - anybody with an existing Socket 939 AMD based motherboard will be able to use one. Worst case, you'll have to download a bios update to enable it, but it will work."
Source: http://hardware.gamespot.com/Story-ST-x-1583-x-x-
"AMD designed the K8 core to be dual ready out of the box, so this whole thing about them having an extra year isn't exactly true - they've had much longer than that."
Source: http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=13344 [theinquirer.net]
Still think almost my whole post was wrong? About what you said:
"Re: sharing I/O bandwidth. Intel has to do this because they don't have a built-in MCH. It has *nothing* to do with "selling chips with 2 normal P4 dies on them"."
It has EVERYTHING to do with having 2 P4 cores in a single package - look at that anand article I posted above, here is a quote from it:
"The major issue with Intel's approach to dual core designs is that the dual cores must contest with one another for bandwidth across Intel's 64-bit NetBurst FSB. To make matters worse, the x-series line of dual core CPUs are currently only slated for use with an 800MHz FSB, instead of Intel's soon to be announced 1066MHz FSB. The reduction in bandwidth will hurt performance scalability and we continue to wonder why Intel is reluctant to transition more of their CPUs to the 1066MHz FSB, especially the dual core chips that definitely need it.
With only a 64-bit FSB running at 800MHz, a single x40 processor will only have 6.4GB/s of bandwidth to the rest of the system. Now that 6.4GB/s is fine for a single CPU, but an x40 with two cores the bandwidth requirements go up significantly."
Dear Intel, (Score:4, Funny)
However, because of your poor form of not making documentation or firmware freely available, I will instead be sending my personal dollars, and (significantly larger) work budget, to AMD.
Extreme edition (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Extreme edition (Score:2)
Re:Extreme edition (Score:5, Funny)
Double Anal Penetration
EXTREME Double Anal Penetration
Chocolate Asian Anal Gangbangs
EXTREME Chocolate Asian Anal Gangbangs
American Heroes Bukkake
EXTREME American Heroes Bukkake
I think we can all agree that Intel is on the right track.
Re:Extreme edition (Score:2)
Would I need the "Pro" version of XP? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Would I need the "Pro" version of XP? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Would I need the "Pro" version of XP? (Score:4, Interesting)
It's just irritating.
Re:Would I need the "Pro" version of XP? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Would I need the "Pro" version of XP? (Score:2)
Instead, you will see performance gains when running mutliple applications. With even one app, it will allow multiple threads (ones for the OS and ones for the App) to run simultaneously, giving you a boost. Running more than one app or running apps compiled with multi-threading in mind will show a performance boost no matter what Windows version you are running.
How much it'll cost? ha! (Score:2, Funny)
The Answer is simple
An arm, a leg and your left testicle* - it's Intel afterall
--------
*or ovary if you're a woman
Gamers won't be interested (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Gamers won't be interested (Score:3, Interesting)
We walked into a computer shot and a sales guy jumped on us in no time. We let him show us around and do his schtick for a bit and then I asked him why they didn't have any machines slower than 1Ghz for my wife who just browses the web but mai
Re:Gamers won't be interested (Score:3, Interesting)
The reason they don't make 1 GHz CPUs is because they would never sell enough of them for proportionally-lower pricing to make sense. Chip manufacturing is full of sweet spots. This is why Mini-ITX boards with the slower Centaur processors are actually significantly more expensive than commodity Intel/AMD boards. They amount to a low-volume niche product with no economies of scale to speak of, so you won't save any money just because you're buying a slower CPU. Y
Uh, right.... (Score:4, Insightful)
So in other words... unless you have extreme cooling this thing will never run at full speed for long. Because when it does, it will quickly heat up and this power management will throttle the clock speed and core voltage. Apps may start up a little faster, but long-term consumers of CPU cycles (e.g media encoding, some games, etc) won't see much improvement. But I'm sure lots of clueless consumers will go for this new eXtreme CPU. Can't wait to see what bullshit analogy Intel will come up with for the TV ads...
Re:MOD PARENT DOWN! (Score:2)
Yeah, the "insightful" mod always puzzled me. It gets overused a lot and I'm sure most of the moderators don't really know the meaning of the word. IMHO, "interesting" should be used in place of "instightful" in most situations.
Back on topic, one pentium 4 EE is hot enough, so two must be really hot. Everyone knows the P4 is hot, just ask anyone on slashdot! ;)
Buuuuut (Score:2, Interesting)
Dual core ? (Score:4, Funny)
Just have to ask... (Score:5, Funny)
This is so exciting! (Score:5, Funny)
That means they'll leave me alone and quit bitching about slow machines for a while! Woohoo! Oh, and will help that winword.exe that keeps crashing and staying backgrounded. Woot!
(Yes, I know the spyware will take over both proc's. Let me dream)
Long term solution? (Score:3, Interesting)
Short term flop (Score:2, Interesting)
I agree that the expectation is double the core, double the power. This test processor is dismal in that regard. I guess we will all have to
Apple n Oranges (Score:2, Interesting)
WWDC perhaps?
Dual eq mucho $$$ and little benefit. (Score:2)
In the future no doubt more applications will include multi-threading, but I'm not holding my breath.
What do you think the stability will be like with yet more bloated code?
When setting up servers, you will most certainly find that "dual" is something to stay away from. Running multiple machines is far more economical, easier to replace components, and moving your
No AMD comparo, funny that (Score:4, Interesting)
This lack of comparison indirectly tells me that AMD's dual core solution is going to wipe the floor with Intel's, even more so than the current AMD performance advantage over Intel on single core procs.
I wonder how big a gun Intel put to their head. I also wonder how much AMD is pissed off at being "scooped", when they've been working at this for a much longer time.
jh
My only complaint with the article.... (Score:5, Insightful)
Listen, for office productivity and "how fast can I open spreadsheets", nobody SHOULD need more than one CPU.
The rendering tests were a little disappointing (I seem to recall a bigger gap in the AMD benchmarks), but really the point of dual CPU's is, as anyone who has used one knows, responsiveness.
Yeah rendering times dropping to 60% of normal is nice, but let me tell you, where a normal single CPU system would sit there gurgling and choking on its own vomit because some dirty little application decides it MUST use up all the CPU time, dual CPU systems just go "eh, whatever, hes being a jerk, I can help you over here."
It is SO nice to use a dual CPU system in daily routine useage (which for me is QUITE varied) just for the increase in responsiveness alone.
Needs OS and app-level support ? (Score:2)
Re:Needs OS and app-level support ? (Score:4, Informative)
Multithreaded applications spawn off multiple segments of executable code in memory to do different things...a network scanner that operates in a multithreaded model might spin off a thread for every few hundred connections, so it can handle more in parallel.
"Multithreaded" applications are built to parallelize easily, as each thread can hit a different physical CPU. Single-threaded applications will also benefit from multiple CPUs/cores, but less directly: a single-threaded app would have less resource contention on a multiple CPU system, vs a single CPU system.
The OS scheduler is the deciding factor for what-goes-where and there's some hefty math involved for a lot of it...most of that, however, is handled automatically and transparently (although you can "force" affinity to CPUs if you're so inclined.)
Yawn... (Score:3, Interesting)
even the Extreme Edition dual core CPU only has an 800MHz effective FSB, not 1066MHz
It doesn't make much sense to put two processors on the same bus, and then lower the bus speed. And, as the benchmarks showed, single-threaded applications ran slower on the dual-core processor than on the regular P4
I understand "dual core" has a certain market appeal - much like faster clock speeds. Never mind the fact that bus bandwidth and hard drive speed have a greater overall effect on system performance.
Those who want dual cores would be better off buying a computer that was designed to support multiple cpu's - for example, a UNIX workstation. It doesn't matter how many cores you put on a chip if your memory bus can't feed them:
- An P4 can theoretically execute 2 instructions every clock cycle.
- Make that 4 instructions/clock for a dual core.
- Each instruction averages 4 bytes of data access. Since we'll consider the instructions to be cached, we'll ignore the memory access for them, for now. So we're up to 16 bytes of throughput per clock cycle.
- At 3200 MHz, times 16 bytes/clock, we're up to 51,200 MB/s theoretical throughput.
- Yet, the 800 MHz FSB (which transfers 8 bytes/cycle) can only do 6400 MB/s throughput.
Granted, 6.4 GB/s is very fast - But even a single core P4 can saturate the memory bus. What point is there in adding another core (aside from marketing hoopla), when the bus can't run fast enough to support it!It seems to me that Intel added the power management features to the chip because they knew that the second core was going to be idle most of the time.
Re:Yawn... (Score:4, Insightful)
Dungeons and Dragons fans... (Score:2)
Re:Dual P4 = Back to the old days? (Score:4, Informative)
http://www.hexus.net/content/reviews/review.php?d
Going to be about £650 in the UK according to HEXUS.
Re:Dual P4 = Back to the old days? (Score:2)