12-Core Chips from AMD in 2010

Well it's good to see AMD stepping up to the plate but I'd like to see more of the desktop arena addressed along with the server platforms.

wow, 12 cores in 2010? that means that those of us with dual or even quad core processors will feel a need to upgrade.

also, this trend is showing up in the video card market as well. the 9800 gx2, 3870 x2. seems like its harder and harder to create a new better architecture (or maybe it just costs more) so companies look to decrease size and just slap on more cores.

When I look at Intel's plan, they still seem ahead.

You have Nehalem with 4 cores (8 threads) at the end of this year, 2008, then their 8 core (16 thread) procs in 2009. (45 nm) Not to mention Nehalem will be changing mobo architecture and switching us over to triple channel memory and 'QPI'.

Then at the end of 2009 the Westmeres will be coming out, which is the 32nm shrink of the Nehalems.

In 2010, Sandy Bridge (32nm) will be released... with clock speeds at 4GHz and up to 32 cores (not sure about threads). The 22nm shrink will be available in 2011.

And all along that road you are getting new instruction sets, memory controllers on the processor die, etc.

It will be interesting to see how the AMD and Intel plans play out.

willardcw4:

When I look at Intel's plan, they still seem ahead.

You have Nehalem with 4 cores (8 threads) at the end of this year, 2008, then their 8 core (16 thread) procs in 2009. (45 nm) Not to mention Nehalem will be changing mobo architecture and switching us over to triple channel memory and 'QPI'.

Then at the end of 2009 the Westmeres will be coming out, which is the 32nm shrink of the Nehalems.

In 2010, Sandy Bridge (32nm) will be released... with clock speeds at 4GHz and up to 32 cores (not sure about threads). The 22nm shrink will be available in 2011.

And all along that road you are getting new instruction sets, memory controllers on the processor die, etc.

It will be interesting to see how the AMD and Intel plans play out.

ice_73:

all this worries me as a consumer. sure i know computer hardware is constantly changing and that newer and better things come out and that a top performance system will only be good for aprox 3 years. but all these plans to have 12 + cores in 2010 scares me it means that no matter when you buy your cpu, in about 6 months a newer one will come out with about 2x cores.

I do agree with you... its hard to make yourself buy computer parts when you know they will be easily trumped by something coming out in 6-12 months... :( I was going to upgrade to Penryn, but decided i'm going to wait until Nehalem, simply because motherboards and ram configurations will be changing... So by the time I upgrade, it will be early 2009... then later that year they will be cranking out the 32nm processors! ARGH!

Yes the sun systems have  like 8 cores with 4 hyperthreads per core for like a total of 32 cores but they also don't carry advance instruction sets. They are very different from the cpu's in your average system. I just don't see how having 12 cores could really benfit the average user verses 2-4 cores that are more powerfull. For servers yes I understand how it can benefit but not the average user.

nelsoncp21:

Yes the sun systems have  like 8 cores with 4 hyperthreads per core for like a total of 32 cores but they also don't carry advance instruction sets. They are very different from the cpu's in your average system. I just don't see how having 12 cores could really benfit the average user verses 2-4 cores that are more powerfull. For servers yes I understand how it can benefit but not the average user.

Just for reference:
If you want to see lots of cores, take a look at some of Sun Microsystem's servers. Yes, they are servers, and some of them seem rather slow at 1GHz, but they have 32, 64 cores. Of course it's not going to run the same as the next 4/8/12-core, but it's proof of where the future is going right there.

And lastly, you can actually buy the thing! (although I think you need Solaris on it)

Intel and AMD both expected 10ghz chips by now.  That never came to light (unless you count quad-core 3Ghz as 12ghz, which it really isn't).  I just wonder how many cores they can fit on a chip until they reach a core barrier that's like the 3-4ghz barrier.  CPUs might not be the small little chips we see today, I wonder if we'll see a return to much larger CPUs that are on a card that plugs into a slot.  Who knows.  It'll definately be a hell of a ride and I agree than multi-core is the future.  But have fun programming for 12 cores!

I think there is no point in making more muli-core processors until programs know how to use 4 cores properly!

This will be very cool, at least for the people who will be able to use so many cores. I would think that most people with dual-core processors now will probably have a minimum quad-core by 2010. I usually upgrade my processor every 2-3 years, so the next upgrade I would like to do is something like 12 cores from Intel though. I don't like AMD at all. Also 12 Cores sounds like a lot, but seeing how the quad-cores from AMD were less powerful then the Q6600 was kind of dissapointing. We will just have to see how it performs. The new Intel 8-core processor will be sweet. It is suppose to come out the end of the year.

What needs to happen first is Software needs to be written to handle multicore systems better (yes even operating systems). I really hope that is a big plus side to Windows 7. Vista helped a little bit but still, performance over multiple cores can improve a  great deal.

I hope I,ve live to 2010 I would like to test one of those out.At this point I couldnt imagine the performance differance!

 Lets hope it wont cost an arm and 2 legs.