Wednesday, October 17th 2007
Demand for Quad-Core Processors Increasing
After relatively slow start quad-core processors are beginning to rapidly gain popularity among various customers. Paul Otellini, chief executive of Intel Corp. said during a conference with financial analysts on Tuesday that shipments of chips with four processing engines topped three million units last quarter. Growing demand towards quad-core microprocessor is a result of relatively moderate pricing on them, which begins at $266 for Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 as well as availability of software that takes advantage of multi-core chips.
Current quad-core processors from Intel use multi-chip-package technique and incorporate two dual-core processors onto a single piece of substrate. Given that it is considerably easier to manufacture two relatively low-power monolithic dual-core dice than to produce one monolithic quad-core product, Intel's approach not only allowed the company to roll-out quad-core products back in November 2006, but also does seem to make more sense from economic point of view compared to monolithic designs praised by Advanced Micro Devices due to the fact that potentially such quad-core chips have considerably higher yields compared to AMD's. The new quad-core AMD Opteron and the forthcoming quad-core AMD Phenom processors use monolith implementation, which means that all the cores are incorporated into a single piece of silicon. AMD claims that its quad-core CPUs can deliver better performance and scalability.Since the demand towards quad-core processors is only likely to continue accelerating, AMD will have rapidly ramp up output of such chips in order to increase its average selling prices.
Source:
X-bit Labs
Current quad-core processors from Intel use multi-chip-package technique and incorporate two dual-core processors onto a single piece of substrate. Given that it is considerably easier to manufacture two relatively low-power monolithic dual-core dice than to produce one monolithic quad-core product, Intel's approach not only allowed the company to roll-out quad-core products back in November 2006, but also does seem to make more sense from economic point of view compared to monolithic designs praised by Advanced Micro Devices due to the fact that potentially such quad-core chips have considerably higher yields compared to AMD's. The new quad-core AMD Opteron and the forthcoming quad-core AMD Phenom processors use monolith implementation, which means that all the cores are incorporated into a single piece of silicon. AMD claims that its quad-core CPUs can deliver better performance and scalability.Since the demand towards quad-core processors is only likely to continue accelerating, AMD will have rapidly ramp up output of such chips in order to increase its average selling prices.
31 Comments on Demand for Quad-Core Processors Increasing
But it's a good thing that games are multi-threaded now adays.
NOTE that my question is different from the fact that if you can MULTITASK, ie, internet while encoding DivX while listening to MP3. etc.
The list gets much bigger if you include games from the Hyperthreading era as well as games built for two cores.
i have it on my christmas shopping list! :p
The question remains open: which "single" software uses 4-cores?
anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=3127&p=4
Whether that minor increase qualifies it as a 'quad core' game is up to interpretation.
It's the same for Hellgate:London, Supreme Commander. Big gains from single to dual, then minor increases as you increase the number of cores.
q2140? That would be something I would be interested in but not many people really listen to me! :p
Of course Folding@home and most of the other distributed computing programs use them, along with a lot of Video editing programs, video encoding/decoding programs, and 3D rendering programs will use 4 cores.
BTW sorry for telling you to STFU I got a little upset there :ohwell::ohwell:
I recoded Transformers (Main Movie without extras) from 6.33GB to 4.35GB using a single hard drive from one folder to another. CloneDVD took 12 minutes and Nero Recode took 3 minutes.
I left Speedfan open while doing it and could clearly see from the CPU usage monitror that CloneDVD only used 1 of the cores while Nero Recode used all 4 at almost full load.
I have not tried recoding with any other apps but I have to say that I am thouroughly impressed with Nero Recode. I would love to find out more applications that are capable of using all 4 cores like this other than things like 3D Max.
Also doesnt Nero recode come with the regular Nero software kit you can buy at computer stores, I.E. Nero 7.0 I believe it is now?
As for Nero. Yes, you are correct that Nero 7.0 includes Nero Recode. At least the version I have does which is Nero 7 Premium.
It also includes some nice easy to use audio editing software as well as Nero Vision for authoring home DVD's with menus and so on. I also really enjoy the Nero Tools such as Nero Drive Speed that allows you to slow down your DVD read speed for watching your movies more quietly. (handy for media center PC's especially). As you can see I am a big fan of Nero.