June
01 2005:
Welcome Back!
I have covered the evolving Dual Core Battle field numerous times over
the last year or so, but with at least 2 of the 3 Majors finally releasing
product, we can for the first time finally get an accurate idea of just
what is on offer, and what benefit, if any are these chips going to
bring to the table.
Both Intel and AMD have taken vastly different approaches to their respective
launches, with Intel targeting the Desktop /Workstation Market, and
AMD targeting the Server Market. Both have managed to get past the initial
paper launch circus of last month, to actually start getting product
in to the field. Supply is still a little thin on the ground, but by
mid June, we will have an avalanche of chips at our disposal. Apple
are still lost in their Widgets unfortunately, but I do have some more
info regarding their future Dual Core plans.
Intel were first off the Block with their Dual Core Offering. Originally
codenamed Smithfield, the new Pentium D has finally seen the light of
day. We have covered the Smithfield chip numerous times in the past,
but just to recap – Smithfield is basically 2 Prescott PIV Cores
tacked onto a Single Chip, each having a 1MB L2 Cache, both cores still
have a shared Memory Bus, as well as also communicating with each other
via Intel’s aging FSB architecture. The initial design is far
from elegant, and as reported in the earlier articles, little more than
a knee jerk reaction to AMD fast tracking their Dual Core roadmap.
All that aside, the chips are delivering performance on par to a similarly
clocked Dual Xeon, however the Pentium D taps out at 3.2 GHz, whereas
the Xeons are available to 3.6 GHz. Intel has managed to reign in the
heat dissipation a fair amount, but these puppies are still running
pretty hot, drawing in access of 125 Watts at full tilt. Granted Intel
took the safe option of limiting the clock speeds to the lower grades
to help ramp yield rates, which has also helped in keeping the pricing
of the units to a very reasonable level. There are already reports of
units being over clocked to over 4 GHz with standard air cooling, so
I would suggest that Intel are being rather conservative with the clock
speeds at present.
AMD followed Intel’s launch very closely with the initial launch
of their Dual Core Opteron MP line for 2 x 4 x and 8 x Servers, but
on release day pulled the rabbit out and also announced their Athlon
64- X2 range, to counter any possible exodus to Intel on the Desktop/
Workstation Market. Mind you the X2 launch was really only a paper launch,
as the units are still many, many months away. The Basic architecture
of the 2 chips are identical. They are a true Dual Core, i.e., 2 cores
on a single die, each with 512 K or 1 MB L2 , a shared onboard memory
controller as well as an onboard arbitration Buss that connects the
2 Cores internally. This is far more elegant and efficient a design
than Intel’s, as the AMD architecture had always had the facility
to migrate to a dual core design.
The performance of the chips have proved to be slightly better than
a similarly clocked Dual Opteron system, probably due to the reduced
latencies involved with the 2 Cores communicating internally via the
arbitration buss , than having to communicate externally via the Hypertransport
link of the Dual Opterons. AMD have released Clock speeds right up to
the fastest grades of the regular single Core chips, as the heat dissipation
of the units is far more controllable than the Intel variants. The other
added advantage is that the chips are supposed to work in current Motherboards
with only a BIOS update required. However as we go to press, on the
Desktop front a lot of the 3rd party motherboard manufacturers are remaining
coy about whether they will offer the BIOS upgrades, so its still a
grey area. Most Server based boards for the Dual Opterons – making
them a Quad Core System - already have the required BIOS available,
but there have been reported issues with getting the chips settled.
Not to mention whether the software applications are actually capable
of utilising the 4 Cores… more on that later…
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Apples Dual Core aspirations are still a little
hard to set in concrete. However, IBM have finally confirmed the existence
of “Antares” formally known as the 970MP. The first hint
was Apple’s hardware performance testing tools had been modified
to include support for quad-processor systems, which makes sense if
Apple is planning twin dual-core systems. The chip is believed to
contain two PowerPC 970 cores each with its own Velocity Engine SIMD
unit and 1MB of L2. IBM had posted an advisory on its website informing
hardware developers how to use the chip's on-board temperature monitors
- two thermal diodes - to ensure the chip doesn't overheat, suggesting
that these new puppies will be continuing the trend of the heat dissipation
problems of the current G5 that have held the clock speeds back from
what were initially promised. I’d suggest we're likely to see
the use of liquid cooling across the board, even for Single Dual Core
CPU systems. The exact ETA is anyone’s guess unfortunately,
but with the performance delta widening between the G5’s and
the X86 chips, I would suggest some action before the years out. :-)
I mentioned earlier about applications taking advantage of the potential
4 Cores on a Dual Core System. This was the dream for the Native DAW
advocates to have an affordable multi core system, and an application
that could take advantage of the multiple threads such as Steinberg’s
Nuendo. There was an issue with Nuendo not being able to support Hyperthreaded
Dual Xeon Systems, as these would appear to the system as 4 Virtual
CPU’s, but it was believed that the problem was due to the virtual
nature of the Cores, and that the application would handle 4 Physical
CPU’s differently. Well that was the theory. Initial tests on
a Dual - Dual Core- Opteron System with Nuendo 3 has proved disappointing
to say the least, with all of the issues of reduced performance being
experienced by the Hyperthreaded Systems, also being experienced by
the systems with the 4 Physical Cores. It is apparent that the Multi
CPU capability of Nuendo was little more than some wishful thinking
on Steinberg marketing’s part… Sigh.. Maybe Nuendo 4.0,
eh??
The potential is definitely there for the Native DAW platform to reach
new heights of performance if they can iron out the kinks in the multi
threaded capability of the Applications. I’m sure that it is
pretty high on the agenda, and if not, it damn well should be.
Till Next Time,
Peace :-)
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