IDF Spring 2005 Day 1 - Gelsinger Speaks, nForce4 Intel and more
by Anand Lal Shimpi & Derek Wilson on March 2, 2005 3:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Trade Shows
Parallelism, Parallelism, Parallelism
Pat has been on a parallelism kick for a long time now, when AMD was talking about 64-bit and on-die memory controllers, all Pat was interested in was parallelism, more specifically, thread level parallelism. It’s taken a few years but Pat is finally seeing his exciting technology come to fruition given that next year Intel expects 80% of its total shipments to be multi-core enabled.
Pat put together an interesting graph showing the performance boost we’ve seen during the lifetime of the Pentium 4 from inception to present day, showing that the current generation Pentium 4 is about 3x the speed of the first Pentium 4:
Assuming heavy adoption of multithreaded software and workloads, this is where Pat sees performance going in the future due to multi-core:
It’s a very optimistic chart, but Pat Gelsinger isn’t one to exaggerate. Given that the entire industry is behind multi-core CPUs, it wouldn’t be too far fetched to see significant performance gains due to multi-core between now and the end of the decade.
We mentioned before that Intel predicted 8-thread CPUs by the end of the decade, but now we have some more information about that prediction thanks to Pat’s presentation:
In mainstream client PCs, Intel will be shipping CPUs capable of executing two simultaneous threads in 2005; these will be the Pentium D (dual core) and the regular Pentium 4 with Hyper Threading (2 logical processors). Note that Intel isn’t including the Pentium Extreme Edition in this figure which is able to execute 4 threads simultaneously, as it is not a mainstream client processor. On the server side Intel is targeting 8 threads per CPU in 2005/2006.
Towards the end of the decade, Intel is pushing for 8 threads on clients - most likely meaning that mainstream PCs will have four independent cores, each with Hyper Threading technology (or 8 simpler cores instead). And on the server, we’re looking at 32 threads per chip by the end of the decade.
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mickyb - Wednesday, March 2, 2005 - link
Doesn't Intel's GOAT (Eh hmm IOAT) sound a lot like what nVidia was doing with their I/O chips? Intel should put "Not to scale" or "No real data was found" on every single one of those extrapolation graphs. I find it kind of funny how multi-core is the panacea to all performance problems. How is this any different than multi CPU SMP? It isn't, except for compressing them to a smaller space. SMP has its problems as well and the number of CPUs does not create an exponential graph like Intel is implying.I am interrested in this FBDIMM and will need to do some checking around on that one. It looks interesting. RAMBUS is still at it. We'll see how things shape up.
glennpratt - Wednesday, March 2, 2005 - link
That changes his point very little. And, YOU probably won't be buying crap out of pocket...Questar - Wednesday, March 2, 2005 - link
When will you guys realize how small the gaming market is?I'll buy more corporate systems this year than every gamer on this site will buy in the next five years.
Pete84 - Wednesday, March 2, 2005 - link
^^ Not just games, but every app too . . .ZobarStyl - Wednesday, March 2, 2005 - link
I love the graph on page 4, where multicore just jumps ahead by leaps and bounds, with the "Performance" being exponential growth. I'm sorry but the last time we saw something like this it was the NetBurst graph taking us into "10 GHz Space" and lo and behold, well you know the story. I'm so tired of Intel just putting a band-aid on a bad idea for a chip (not a bad chip mind you, just designed by marketing people, not engineers). Multicore without onboard memory controllers, tacking on an extra meg of slower cache to Prescott...why are we not seeing samples of a new chip that aims to correct the problems of NetBurst rather than just adding more and more to Prescott like it really is going to change the fact? Until games get really multi-core oriented, this last generation of single-core products is going to be the best thing out there until probably late 06.raskren - Wednesday, March 2, 2005 - link
^^You^^Guess what, none of these are anywhere near store shelves so CTFD (calm the F down).
The Nforce4 board finally adds some appeal to the latest Pentium 4s. I'd say that i875/865 were the last two exciting chipsets. 9xx has fallen short on innovation.
Beenthere - Wednesday, March 2, 2005 - link
The SpinMeisters from Intel are realing blow smoke up the azzes of journalist, as usual. Only the gullible would belive the nonsense these folks peddle when they can't even deliver a P4 without a fire extinguisher. No one with a clue would touch any of Intel's current or short term products. Maybe by '07 Intel will have something worth considering but that remains to be seen.xsilver - Wednesday, March 2, 2005 - link
The idea of VT is a good one I think -- it may be possible to run a small office on only 1 multicore, multithread system? (spreadsheets and email aren't exactly taxing)and intel's idea of split dual cores may be future possibilities of selling cpu's scaled with cores rather than clock speeds?
eg. Extreme edition will have 8 cores, regular will have 4-7 cores ... celerons will have 1-3 cores... according to how the cpu's are binned?
bersl2 - Wednesday, March 2, 2005 - link
--quote--Microsoft’s Jim Allchin came on stage and echoed Gelsinger’s statements with the simple line “it’s time.”
--quote--
Duuuuuuuu... no, really?
"And Wintel said, 'Let there be light!' But they were too slow to realize that the light had been on for quite some time."