Intel Planning Six-Core Processor, Will Call it 'Dunnington'

[Triprift]

Yes like a mate no who has to have the latest and greatest king e-penis is he.

[spacejunky]

Originally Posted by spootity

if the game industry would just jump aboard whole heartidly to the multi core concept/the cpu makers have already done it, i think it would be beneficial to us to have that extra power.

Unreal Tournament 3 takes advantage of quad core and triple core so it should be able to keep scaling. They still don't fully utilize though.

Read a little about it here

[Ravenas]

Originally Posted by DonInKansas

But what about those needing e-penis extensions? You forgot about that....

Heh, bring it on...........

Haha...Yeah lets not forget that, major props and benchmarks to a person with 6 cores (assuming they make benchmark that can bench 6 cores).

[Wile E]

Originally Posted by Ravenas

Haha...Yeah lets not forget that, major props and benchmarks to a person with 6 cores (assuming they make benchmark that can bench 6 cores).

3DMark06

[devilhood]

Dun dun dunn!(ington)

Today's software and games barely use up to 4-cores as it is, what on earth are we going to do with 6

[Triprift]

Just looks more impressive serious e-penis lol. ps welcome to tpu

[DanTheBanjoman]

Originally Posted by Ravenas

No one here will need this for a personal PC, this is server type stuff. Your PC will have no idea with what to do with 6 cores, 4 cores are still only functional in a small amount of apps.

This processor will be used for servers.

Nice how you assume everyone here does the same as you with his PC. Think of heavy multitasking, video encoding or applications like 3ds max and the likes.

[btarunr]

Okay, this is preceding Nehalem which means it's bad timing, unless it's ported to the newer socket. The LGA 775/771 won't last till Nehalem and the timing of this chip is something I didn't like, not many people would opt for it keeping in mind the upgrade path.

[DanTheBanjoman]

Actually it just extends the life of your 775 board. It doesn't mention any Xeon (771) chips like this though. Would be nice, 12 cores. However memory bandwidth might become a serious issue here, probably better off with Nehalem.

[1c3d0g]

I don't like these odd-numbered cores...3, 6, maybe next year 9. Come on! Stick with consistent doubling of each, 1, 2, 4, 8 etc. Programmers have enough trouble as it is optimizing for quad core CPU's and beyond...throwing odd ball numbers at it is only going to make it worse. Having said that, I'm extremely exited at the prospect of playing with an 8-core CPU. BOINC/Folding@Home stats would fly through the roof, and that is a good thing for everyone.

[Jizzler]

Originally Posted by DanTheBanjoman

Actually it just extends the life of your 775 board. It doesn't mention any Xeon (771) chips like this though. Would be nice, 12 cores. However memory bandwidth might become a serious issue here, probably better off with Nehalem.

?

The original article makes it seem like they'll have Xeon 54xx and 74xx chips based off this - in fact, Xeon chips only. No s775.

While AMD stumbles around trying to get its first errata-free Barcelona quads out two years behind Intel, Intel is off planning the launch of its six-core Dunnington microprocessor, a hex, if you will, the last of the expected Core 2-based Xeon server chips before it switches over to the Nehalem microarchitecture capable of supporting eight or more cores.

Dunnington, a Bangalore-designed successor to Harpertown, is still supposed to be relatively hush-hush but Intel has reportedly put three dual-core 45nm Penryn chips on a die the size of a postage stamp and sharing a 16MB L3 cache. Like other Penryns, Dunnington still uses a front-side bus.

Dunnington slips into Intel’s Caneland platform and so uses the Clarksboro chipset.

The dingus, which Intel has previously described as pin-compatible with the dual-core/four-socket Tigerton quad, will be two- and four-socket, meaning mainframe-like machines with 24 cores.

Is it just me? Cuz I'm confused with just about everybody's posts in both Dunnington threads

[Scrizz]

how is 6 odd

[newconroer]

Originally Posted by hat

WTF, 3 dies?! So what, Nehalem will be 4 dies? Intel needs to get off thier fat lazy gold-lined asses and actually develop something new.

Have you researched what Nehalem is???


My only concern about this is that it will push Nehalem back to a later date.

[Triprift]

I hope not i actually thought they might of released it earlier but im not sure now.

[PVTCaboose1337]

Umm... super duct tape... 3 C2Ds...

[WarEagleAU]

Not really impressed. Those 8 cores though, that is impressive.

Id like to see Intel quit ductaping cores together and make a contiguous one.

[Silverel]

Originally Posted by 1c3d0g

I don't like these odd-numbered cores...3, 6, maybe next year 9. Come on! Stick with consistent doubling of each, 1, 2, 4, 8 etc. Programmers have enough trouble as it is optimizing for quad core CPU's and beyond...throwing odd ball numbers at it is only going to make it worse. Having said that, I'm extremely exited at the prospect of playing with an 8-core CPU. BOINC/Folding@Home stats would fly through the roof, and that is a good thing for everyone.

Odd numbers of cores force the programmers to LEARN how to optimize their code the right way. It's easier for them to just split the work in half for 2 cores, and split in half again for 4 cores, but the SHOULD be dedicating each core to a certain amount of work and not dedicating certain pieces of work to each core.

That sounds confusing, but it makes sense. Figure it this way, you need to render a pie. As of now, the pie would be cut in half and fed to each core, or into quarters for 4 cores. Each core sits there and munches on it's section of pie until it's done. It would make more sense to have each core TAKE as much they can fit on their plate at the same time instead of it being assigned to them as one big chunk. If they can't finish it it one serving, then all of them should go back for another full slice simultaneously, until its gone. With this sort of methodology in place, you could have any number of cores working on any size pie, and be much more efficient.

[Assimilator]

No software developer worth his or her salt will optimise their application for a specific number of CPUs/cores; they will just code their app to use as many threads as necessary to work in the most efficient way. Such an application would theoretically run faster on a 6-core CPU as opposed to a 2-core CPU, but in reality the application may show no noticeable performance difference. (As an example, consider an application that writes to 2 files simultaneously. Since it only writes to 2 files, running it on a CPU with more than 2 cores won't improve the performance at all.)

For anyone who's wondering, yes, I am a software engineer by trade.

The main problem, however, is that the vast majority of applications available today are coded to use only 2 threads (often because it's not feasible for them to use more than that - for example, a web browser). Right now, the only people who will benefit from having a quad-core CPU are the crazy multi-taskers, hardcore gamers, and manic overclockers (IMO).

Finally, does it really matter how Intel designs their chips, as long as they offer excellent performance? AMD tried the "native" quad-core approach and look at how badly that turned out... Intel has gone with an approach that is inelegent, but works well, and that's what the consumer cares about.

[Ravenas]

Originally Posted by DanTheBanjoman

Nice how you assume everyone here does the same as you with his PC. Think of heavy multitasking, video encoding or applications like 3ds max and the likes.

I assume the majority here isn't using extreme photoshop and running 32 player game servers and doing professional video editing.

Besides that, this can all be done easily with 4 cores and 4 GBs of ram. Unless you're a professional, you won't need them.

Later though, I do acknowledge that there will be a need for 6 cores as more and more developers begin to take multi threaded apps to the next level.

[Fitseries3]

it's called scaling. that's something the stubborn software makers have yet to actually TRY to implicate. scaling isn't really that hard. it just takes someone who will take the opportunity to implicate it. your making it sound like it's REALLY hard, when in all reality, it just takes someone who isn't a lazy ass coder and actually wants their software to scale well with multi core processors.

[Scrizz]

Originally Posted by Assimilator

No software developer worth his or her salt will optimise their application for a specific number of CPUs/cores; they will just code their app to use as many threads as necessary to work in the most efficient way. Such an application would theoretically run faster on a 6-core CPU as opposed to a 2-core CPU, but in reality the application may show no noticeable performance difference. (As an example, consider an application that writes to 2 files simultaneously. Since it only writes to 2 files, running it on a CPU with more than 2 cores won't improve the performance at all.)

For anyone who's wondering, yes, I am a software engineer by trade.

The main problem, however, is that the vast majority of applications available today are coded to use only 2 threads (often because it's not feasible for them to use more than that - for example, a web browser). Right now, the only people who will benefit from having a quad-core CPU are the crazy multi-taskers, hardcore gamers, and manic overclockers (IMO).

Finally, does it really matter how Intel designs their chips, as long as they offer excellent performance? AMD tried the "native" quad-core approach and look at how badly that turned out... Intel has gone with an approach that is inelegent, but works well, and that's what the consumer cares about.

for real who cares about native quad if it's going to perform worse.

[DanTheBanjoman]

Originally Posted by Ravenas

I assume the majority here isn't using extreme photoshop and running 32 player game servers and doing professional video editing.

Besides that, this can all be done easily with 4 cores and 4 GBs of ram. Unless you're a professional, you won't need them.

Later though, I do acknowledge that there will be a need for 6 cores as more and more developers begin to take multi threaded apps to the next level.

So because the market is smaller the product is bad? Nobody tells you to buy one, if you don't require 6 cores buy a C2D or C2Q. There are plenty of people who love to have extra processing power.

[Ravenas]

Originally Posted by DanTheBanjoman

So because the market is smaller the product is bad? Nobody tells you to buy one, if you don't require 6 cores buy a C2D or C2Q. There are plenty of people who love to have extra processing power.

Well I'm not exactly stating that the market is small, the market is HUGE on a professional scale. I would also love to have that processing power, but does that mean I'm going to pay big bucks for a processor that once I get it I realize I just dropped a bunch of money on something I'm not really going to use to its full potential.

[Scrizz]

on a professional scale they are utilizing the hardware

[Fitseries3]

why do people buy big ass trucks and never utilize the capacity of them? it's the same thing.
it's pointless to have a truck unless you can make use of it's potential but people buy trucks and drive them all over the place without ever using it for its real purpose.... hauling, towing, etc. the saem goes with SUV's. most people i see driving SUV's are alone and have nothing else inside their BEAST of a automobile.

what does that nonsense have to do with the topic of 6 core cpu's? it's the simple fact that, whether we need it or not, there is still a market for such a beast of a CPU and i KNOW a TON of people who would love to have a 6 core cpu. if it scales the same way the quads do, then the core 2 hetco will be one crazy chip.