Intel: Quad-Core Is Just the Beginning

**Garritan** · 09-27-2006, 11:39 AM

SAN FRANCISCO—Quad-core processors are only the beginning of what a revitalized Intel has to offer, the company's top executives said here Sept. 26.

The chip maker will deliver in November its first quad-core processors—chips that incorporate four processors each—for both desktops and servers, said CEO Paul Otellini here, in an opening keynote speech at the Intel Developer Forum.

The quad-core chips themselves will offer up to 70 percent greater performance in desktops and 50 percent in servers. However, Intel will continue to push for greater performance, using a combination of more advanced multicore chips, improvements in processor microarchitecture—updating the circuitry that underlies its chips—and more advanced manufacturing technologies.

"The initial quad-core products will be targeted for the enthusiast or the gamer segment of the marketplace. This becomes the first quad-core chip in the industry…that is designed for a desktop processor," Otellini said.

However, "What we will commit to you for these three [Intel processor microarchitecture] generations is a 300 percent increase between now and the end of the decade," Otellini said.

"We think that the capability embodied by this prototype chip will be enabled in a five-year window," Otellini said.

"This kind of performance gives us the capability to imagine things like real-time video search… or speech translation from one language to another."

You can read the rest here.

**lukpcn** · 09-28-2006, 06:07 AM

For me the Dual Core chip is a Science-fiction....

Quad ??? somethign Illusive...

**David_Carter** · 09-28-2006, 07:34 AM

The AMD core 2 Quad got a very excited write up in PCPlus and this may well be the CPU which enables the VSL team to release the long awaited MIR programme.

Looks like AMD are fighting back and thats gotta be good news for high power audio users.

**derekderek** · 09-28-2006, 09:40 AM

Another version of the same story:

http://hardware.slashdot.org/article.../09/26/1937237

**808** · 11-08-2006, 09:00 AM

be sure to check at Digital Audio NetworX www.da-x.de for the power of the presence and a healthy price! : )

**Houston Haynes** · 11-08-2006, 09:14 AM

More hype... but if it spurs competition, play on.

**seclusion** · 11-18-2006, 02:28 PM

It is very interesting at this point in time with computing power.
I've been contemplating a small upgrade. My AMD 3500+ runs Sonar 6 really well, with 2 gigs of ram. To upgrade my system to a dual core X2 4800+ is just under $400 Can... Which would probably kick-~~~~~ and run great for what I do. But man for $500 I had priced out a cheep mobo (suggested by a user on the Sonar forum) for $75, which supports PCI, AGP, 400/3200 ram slots) and a Intel core duo 2. That and the Intel chip can be had for $500. Runs cooler, can be overclocked quite easily. But most of all "smokes" with Sonar 6. Other than being locked into 2 gigs of ram with that paticular mobo. All is in place to support Windows Vista x64 edition. This Christmas is gonna be fun...

**Houston Haynes** · 11-18-2006, 08:16 PM

Going cheap into a dual-core setup is easy (AMD or Intel). That's because the motherboards are a dead end. It's something I did about six months back with the AMD64x2 4400+, and haven't regretted it. The trick is finding the right balance between low entry point and future-proofing. If you buy into a mobo that won't support the next-generation chip, you need to be sure that you get what you want out of it until the next time upgrade. Then again, that's always the trade-off. I'm sure it will be the same way when the sixteen-core CPU chips come out.

**lukpcn** · 11-19-2006, 03:49 AM

Originally Posted by Houston Haynes

Going cheap into a dual-core setup is easy (AMD or Intel). That's because the motherboards are a dead end. It's something I did about six months back with the AMD64x2 4400+, and haven't regretted it. The trick is finding the right balance between low entry point and future-proofing. If you buy into a mobo that won't support the next-generation chip, you need to be sure that you get what you want out of it until the next time upgrade. Then again, that's always the trade-off. I'm sure it will be the same way when the sixteen-core CPU chips come out.

What mobo did You get Houston ?

**Houston Haynes** · 11-19-2006, 09:32 AM

Originally Posted by lukpcn

What mobo did You get Houston ?

GIGABYTE GA K8NSLI Pro - $75
GIGABYTE 6600GT-based passively cooled video card - $90
AMD 64 x2 4400+ - $259

Being able to run Aero in Vista x64 without having to change hardware - PRICELESS.

I'm not sure if you can buy any of these parts any more - I just looked them up on Newegg and didn't see any of them. Time and technology march on. But the point is that it absolutely *smokes* my previous rig (two individual 32-bit machines VST System Linked together), and it runs more quietly (the loudest parts are the hard drives) and with much less heat dissipation - and cost half as much as it did to build out the two 32-bit machines "back in the day".

The video card has a solidly-performing GPU that supports nVidia's PureVideo technology in XP, and it runs Aero in Vista, which gives most of the advantages of PureVideo right out of the box. I get hardware-assisted video decoding on either platform, which can be important when syncing video to score using a compressed video (which is most of the time, from my clients - mostly H.264 encoded QT files or MPEG2). So now I get to comfortably wait things out with this platform on a dual-boot system with XP and Vista while "the next big thing" and all of these interim chip formats and "enthusiast" motherboards come and go.

I'll probably make my next move when AMD comes out with a CPU chip footprint that will support higher-than-dualcore dies, so there will be some future-proofing (although I read some articles a while back that implied AMD would be able to stick with 939 forever and look what happened).

I will also keep an eye on the integration with ATI chipsets (see stream computing) and what leverage for the AMD/ATI combo might have in store, and if there's a quickly-emerging platform that lets me take the next leap forward without breaking the bank, then I won't have any heartburn about retiring my old system because I've not overinvested in it.

Who knows? Maybe by that time quad-cores will be the norm and as cheap as run-of-the-mill dual-cores today. I sure would love to be able to run a 100-piece orchestra with positional impluses on each instrument into a surround mix.