Advances in CPU technology show no signs of slowing down in the next year or so, and neither will the number of cores on new CPU dies. Intel has a six core 45nm Dunnington chip coming first, followed by Nehalem, their new architecture. The big new feature of this will be an integrated memory controller, which will provide a big boost to the memory performance of Intel chips. A feature that has been present in AMD chips for a while.
Now AMD has announced a TWELVE core processor. Taking a leaf from Intel's "squeeze 2 CPU dies into the same package" technique they used to come up with the first quad cores, the Shanghai processor will be made up from two native six core chips crammed into a single die. AMD's bet that a native quad core would yield much greater performance than two dual cores in a single package didn't exactly pay off. Four cores is still four cores after all. So AMD has backtracked and is now using the same technique, except this time it's two hex-core chips, to produce a 'dodeca-core' CPU.
For the first time in ages AMD is pushing ahead of Intel, and it could be the first signs they are ready for a serious comeback. Yet success depends on a few things:
1/ Software taking advantage of as many cores as possible - currently not the case
2/ Decent clock frequencies - 3Ghz+ chips please
3/ No TLB bugs or other erratum - better late than broken
Read the news here
Source : PCplus
