Have been reading up abit on the new quad core CPU and thought that u guys might be interested in a short summary of what these dual/quad core CPUS mean (if u don't already know)....
Basically, whether it is dual or quad or single core CPU, it refers to the number of processors found as part of a packaged CPU, i.e. a CPU that behaves like many CPUs.
Before dual core CPUs emerged, it was realized that there was no practical way of continually increasing the speeds of processors without incurring excessive heat and power consumption, beyond that which is reasonably tolerable. As such, this gave birth to the first dual core processors from Intel, think its about 2004-2005. It means that they packed 2 Pentium-4 chips into a single CPU.
AMD followed suit subsequently with the release of its Athlon 64 X2.
So, what is so good about have more than 1 processors in 1 CPU?
Well, the benefits can only be seen for software that support multi-threaded processing like WinXP. This means that the software is able to split tasks into separate workloads that can run on the different processors. This would allow enhanced speeds and performances if this parallel computing was efficiently managed, meaning you cld potentially perform a task X-times as fast assuming the workload of the task can be spread out evenly between X processors.
Fast forward to the present, Intel has announced the release of the first quad core processors, which as u can guess, is 4 chips packed into 1 CPU, called Core 2 Extreme QX6700. AMD has also announced its own version of quad-core CPU due for release in the later half of this yr.
With this in mind, we are poised for a revolutionary improvement in our CPU processing speeds if the quad core works out as it preaches. But for me, perhaps a dual core will be sufficient for now.......
Basically, whether it is dual or quad or single core CPU, it refers to the number of processors found as part of a packaged CPU, i.e. a CPU that behaves like many CPUs.
Before dual core CPUs emerged, it was realized that there was no practical way of continually increasing the speeds of processors without incurring excessive heat and power consumption, beyond that which is reasonably tolerable. As such, this gave birth to the first dual core processors from Intel, think its about 2004-2005. It means that they packed 2 Pentium-4 chips into a single CPU.
AMD followed suit subsequently with the release of its Athlon 64 X2.
So, what is so good about have more than 1 processors in 1 CPU?
Well, the benefits can only be seen for software that support multi-threaded processing like WinXP. This means that the software is able to split tasks into separate workloads that can run on the different processors. This would allow enhanced speeds and performances if this parallel computing was efficiently managed, meaning you cld potentially perform a task X-times as fast assuming the workload of the task can be spread out evenly between X processors.
Fast forward to the present, Intel has announced the release of the first quad core processors, which as u can guess, is 4 chips packed into 1 CPU, called Core 2 Extreme QX6700. AMD has also announced its own version of quad-core CPU due for release in the later half of this yr.
With this in mind, we are poised for a revolutionary improvement in our CPU processing speeds if the quad core works out as it preaches. But for me, perhaps a dual core will be sufficient for now.......