Announcing Smithfield; Your Dual Core Intel CPU

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AnandTech has the latest roadmap from Intel regarding its dual-core processors. Besides the roadmap AnandTech has put together a pretty goodAMD has already announced that they will be offering dual-core processors sometime in 2005. The only company that plans on shipping dual-core processors is IBM, but IBM hasn't reviled enough to know where they stand.

How much do you all remember about Tejas (and Jayhawk, Tulsa)? What was to be the fourth generation NetBurst CPU line was originally canceled in favor of dual core 90nm processors. Although we can't comment on the fate of Tejas, we can comment on its replacement.

With Intel's latest roadmap, the thought on everyone's mind is "DUAL CORE PENTIUMS WOW!" - and believe me, it takes a lot to get the boss excited. Indeed, it looks like that magic "Tejas" core that disappeared off the face of the earth has resurfaced as a dual core "Smithfield." From what we can tell from the roadmap, Smithfield will show up in Mid 2005 with three desktop SKUs. Remember, AMD's dual core Toledo Opteron will debut as server chips. Both AMD and Intel's chips are scheduled to be 90nm processor cores.

News source: AnandTech

Cont...

Besides exposing plans for a Sudeki sequel, the ad also appeared to reveal two other new games: The Final Option and Dragon Wars. No further information was revealed for those titles, although the listing also mentions Codename Avalon, Climax's previously announced mystery project for next-generation consoles.

Given Sudeki's lackluster critical reception, many industry watchers wondered if Climax will stick with its plans to a sequel. Reps for Climax did not respond to inquiries as of press time.

#1 slapnuts_ox on 03 Aug 2004 - 16:01

When companies compete the consumers win!

#2 jerry on 03 Aug 2004 - 16:06

Intel really does not have an idea where they are headed to. They scrapped Tejas when they realised AMD, IBM were developing dual core cpus and that was going to be big in the future.

#3 Wake6830 on 03 Aug 2004 - 16:35

What kind of performance boost will a dual core chip offer over a comparable single-core chip? Can anyone explain how the two are different in layman's terms?

(8 replies) #4 JohnO on 03 Aug 2004 - 16:44

dual core is like dual procs

instead one core can do one thing and the other core can do another

or they could work togethet

am i right?

#4.1 slapnuts_ox on 03 Aug 2004 - 17:37

you are pretty close. However dual core will perform better than dual processors due to the much lower latency. On apps that aren't coded to take advantage of SMP then you will have one cpu process that app and the other is left for other apps, however when an app is coded for SMP it can take advantage of both cpus or in this case cores and run faster. Personally I think this is an amazing step in computing and will greatly increase the performance of pcs in a lot of areas. It will also make systems seem faster and more responsive under a heavy load.

#4.2 JohnO on 03 Aug 2004 - 17:56

i agree but would it make cpus cost more if they per say had

6 cores?

#4.3 Jason on 03 Aug 2004 - 17:59

Need SMP capable software for it to work.

#4.4 Shining Arcanine on 03 Aug 2004 - 18:46

QUOTE (#4.2)

It will be 6 times the price until the price per core goes down.

QUOTE

I doubt that would be a problem considering that HyperThreading made MutiThreading your applications very popular. Not to mention Windows NT is threaded as it was orignally intended for business use.

#4.5 Jason on 03 Aug 2004 - 19:00

You won't find many games that are SMP capable yet.

#4.6 Radium on 03 Aug 2004 - 19:13

4 cores should be more than enough, anything above 2 cores is just a deperate move, or extreme.
You can't add how many cores you want... the overhead gets greater than the performance boost when there's too many cores.

Dual core CPU will cost twice as much to produce than a single core CPU.
The number of working processors per waffer will halved.

#4.7 slapnuts_ox on 03 Aug 2004 - 19:37

remember though cache is a very expensive part of chips so depending on whether they will double the cache with the cores or figure a method of sharing the cache between the cores. Think about it.....if an athlon 64 has 1MB of cache for 1 core then to keep the same performance per core you'd have to have 2MB of cache total then which really increases the chip cost.

#4.8 Cephas on 04 Aug 2004 - 00:06

I think both cores would share one L2 cache. Of course the performance wouldn't be instantly doubled, not even theoretically since the cache would be shared, but it should make SMP capable programs at least 50% faster and it should make the system more response overall since different non-SMP processes can be assigned to different cores. As for SMP/multi-core/multi-processor support, it's actually not too bad. Games such as Quake 3 already have it (had it, I think it was removed in a patch because it was bugged), and thanks to Hyperthreading, developers have already adapted many programs for it.

(3 replies) #5 mrp04 on 03 Aug 2004 - 17:30

I think so, i dont know. But if it is that way, Hyper threaded dual-core is GOOOOOD

#5.1 Colonel_Angus on 03 Aug 2004 - 18:09

The IBM Power5 is both hyper threaded and dual core.

#5.2 Shining Arcanine on 03 Aug 2004 - 18:48

QUOTE (#5.0)

If this is P6 based like I hope, it won't have Hyper Threading unless Intel considers the small benefit that it would provide worth porting it.

#5.3 kawai on 03 Aug 2004 - 19:09

I don't think it won't be hard to port it to P6

the question would be, would the P6 core beneift from HT as much as with netburst.

Last edited by 1656 on 03 Aug 2004 - 19:21

#6 MrRogers on 03 Aug 2004 - 18:28

Whoops:

pretty goodAMD has .... IBM hasn't reviled enough

#7 [f] on 03 Aug 2004 - 19:29

Besides the roadmap AnandTech has put together a pretty goodAMD has already announced that they

huh?

(1 reply) #8 Gary_Player on 03 Aug 2004 - 22:52

As if the regular ones wern't hot enough

#8.1 Help on 04 Aug 2004 - 00:00

I think with dual-core processors, water cooling is nesscary.

#9 Trek234 on 04 Aug 2004 - 00:58

Shades of 3dfx.... Seems when a tech company can't compete it either 1. Overclocks the hell out of its top product OR 2. Attempts to merge 2 or more of its top product in to one.

Last edited by 29099 on 04 Aug 2004 - 02:25

#10 VikingStorm on 04 Aug 2004 - 03:06

I was under the impression they would have dual-core Dothans, but I guess after all the money they spent on Tejas, they probably wanted a released (though altered) product to show for it.

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