Intel Developer Forum Fall 2004: Day 1 Keynote
by Derek Wilson on September 7, 2004 5:11 PM EST- Posted in
- Trade Shows
Pushing Parallelism
Finally, we have the demo we'd all been waiting for. Intel showed a 4p Itanium server running 4 dual core processors. This results in windows seeing 16 logical processors and reveals a crazy looking task manager window. The reason each dual core processor appears as four is that each core support Hyperthreading. Here's what ctrl+alt+del looks like with 4 parallel 1.7billion transistor dual core Itaniums:
The demo Intel ran on dual core processors was a very complex weather simulator.
While very cool, such a brief taste of the technology always leaves us wanting more. Unfortunately, Intel is being very tight lipped about their dual core endeavors in other areas. They have stated that dual core processors will be available in 2005, and that they expect some very high adoption rates to push dual core computing to 40% of desktops by 2006, and 85% of servers (which would be dual and multi core). They say the technology is also well suited to mobile devices, but we don't really have any more info than that. It is very clear that Intel will be targeting this area very aggressively as they expect the mobile market to be 70% dual core in 2006.
We were able to get a further lesson in parallelism in Intel's guests from NASA. The Space Administration is apparently working on a supercomputer using and sgi Itanium 2 server targeted at 60 Teraflops of power. This would put it at 50% more compute power than the worlds fastest supercomputer. The supercomputer project is called project Columbia and will feature 10000 processors when completed.
Now that Intel and AMD have both demonstrated dual core processors, it's only a matter of waiting for this technology to come down the pipe, into our labs, and into your homes. Here's to time flying.
We will do some digging while we're here, and hopefully someone will be able to help us discern a few more details about upcoming dual core technology and whatever else Intel may have up their sleeves. It's off to the show floor for now.
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idgaf13 - Tuesday, September 7, 2004 - link
Can we just be try to be objective when analyzying the data ?I expect "more" from the Intels and IBMs
in the industry.
The volume and prowess of their engineering departments should be an awesome force to reckon with.
Intel has not had a demonstrable lead in design or manufacturing in several years.
They have only been maintaining parity with the competition.
They intially argued against the need for 13 micron and smaller die shrink ,they followed the lead of IBM and AMD. And followed again when copper replaced aluminum in the CPU.
RDRAM and Itanium 2 good ideas ?
I have seen no benefit as a result of them.
The die shrink and change of substrate have definitely benefited the user.
Intels marketing sounds more and more like a
MS marketing campaign and less like a demonstration of engineering prowess.
I certainly hope the balance of the IDF will yield some demonstrations of engineering prowess that Intel has.
To think that they are intimidated to the point of not releasing info is amazing to me.
Questar - Tuesday, September 7, 2004 - link
#5,Look at the slides, they say dual core desktop in 2005.
Why demo a sual core p4, they just showed a chip 1.7 billion transistors. There's no point in showing a p4 when you have the big gun on stage.
Get back to me when you're doing real time weather simulation on an AMD chip, okay?
Night201 - Tuesday, September 7, 2004 - link
I have that National Geographic issue shown on Page 3. That's so cool! It's a great article if anyone can read it. Maybe I'll scan it one day.Falloutboy - Tuesday, September 7, 2004 - link
as I figured no dual core p4 or P-M demonstration. I think 2005 is going to be a long shot for them if they don't even have anything to show now. Only reason I can think other than they really are BSing how far they are on a desktop dual core chip is that its not what we all expect and they don't want to give AMD the heads up too earlyDerekWilson - Tuesday, September 7, 2004 - link
Sorry bout that. the network went down right before I could hit post on the third page. but the net finally came back up and now all is well.Saist - Tuesday, September 7, 2004 - link
ah, there's page 3.For a while I was wondering if Anandtech was acting out a scene from SpaceBalls.
sprockkets - Tuesday, September 7, 2004 - link
I guess the article is still in progress.That's what I like about the Athlon 64, no stupid large caches necessary.
mcveigh - Tuesday, September 7, 2004 - link
wheres page 3?