deowll says:

The number of cores that can be used effectively depends on the OS, the chip design, and how much you need to get done.

I doubt if I personally need one right now.

I doubt if soy toner is an issue other than price and how well it works.

Biden is on the take from the crappy wood and any thing for a buck music companies just like Bush and his boys were. No change there.

If they can’t get the security issues under control we are all bleep.

Mark T. says:

What is the logical progression for putting more and more cores on a chip? So far we have had two, then four, then eight, and now 16. What is next, 32? Will it keep doubling or is there some other method to the arrangement of cores on the chip?

I read that Intel had shown an experimental 80 core chip so that blows my theory on how the core count would double as it does with the 8, 16, 32, 64 bit addressing. Would an 80 core chip be 8×10 or quad 4×5 config or what?

BTW, is 128 bit processing decades away for consumer computers? I would only think that 128 bit processing would be necessary when CPUs need to address more than 16.8 million terrabytes of RAM (phew!). Say hello to HAL 9000.

joaoPT says:

Well, basically the troubles with multicore computers is code and bus. The code has to be written to be parallel (ie. every task is subdivided into concurrent tasks) that is challenging for a number of reasons, but notably because there are tasks that are intrinsically sequential. So there’s so much you can gain by parallelizing.
The other bottleneck is access to memory, resources and interprocess comunication. As more cores you put to the task, the more they step on each other’s toes…

ECA says:

PS,
and 90% of the problem comes with the software MMU that cant handle ALL this without getting confused..

Glenn E. says:

“Congress looking into broadband pricing…”?

Yeah, just like the way they “looked into” cable tv rates. NOT! I guess Congress just realized they were running short of lobbyist dollars. So once more they’ve threatened to “look into” some monopoly’s price scheme. With the implied threat that they might regulate it. Nothing will bring the lobbyists running with their attache cases stuffed with presents (and cash) and vacation getaways to tropical resorts, like the sound of a regulatory bill in the wind. But don’t expect Congress to actually do anything effected for the general public. This in only a scheme to elicit funds and favors. As Congress almost always does. And if they work the bill right, it could even raise broadband rates. It will most certainly kill any chance of “free broadband” existing anywhere.

JoaoPT says:

12 Eca

We had this talk before, but… here we go:

“Around 10 years ago, INTEL wanted to go to parallel processing with the x86 chip set..
MS said NO..”

X86 is somewhat parallel since the inception of the original Pentium, 16 years ago, the first x86cpu with a superscalar design (ie. more than one instructions dispatched in parallel in diverse execution units…)

“What would you do IF’ a card(video/audio/network/..) had access to its OWN share of ram and direct access to the HD, without dealing with the CPU?
When you DL a program off the net it goes directly to the HD, and the CPU does nothing.”

Already does that, it’s called DMA and Bus mastering. Of course CPU is minimally involved (after all the OS has to control it and the OS runs on the CPU…).

“the CPU finds a video file, SHIPS it to the VIDEO card to do the processing, insted of the CPU doing the work. The Audio and video card and setup there OWN linking directly, insted of running thru the CPU for clock cycles..FASTER video and LESS lip sync problems..”

Things are not so linear, since tasks are complex, and evolve over time (thus negating the advantage of an all hardware solution), but OpenGl and DirectX offload 3d and video decompressing and motion estimation to the graphics card.

“Nice to see you know a few other OS’s..
Did you know that Linux can run a DVD MOVIE Quality on a P3 800mhz?
And MS requires at least a P3 1700mhz??
And do you think your DVD player has a P3 built into it??
As well as that Linux and others can be run in MANY other environments then a SERIAL processed CPU controlled environment.. Go look at the Amiga and BOs..BOTH Linux based..”

That’s not true altogether…I still remember running fullscreen video on a P3 450mhz (of course it was win98…XP is much more impacting on video performance).
Neither the Amiga nor BeOS had their roots on Unix. (and certainly not Linux, because Linus started working on what later became Linux, as a school project the summer of 91, later than BeOs and AmigaOS…)

“You mention CURRENT tech working with the MMU..IT TOOK THEM THIS LONG to fix this problem?? and the Amiga had a hardware MMU HOW LONG AGO?? Over 20 years ago.”

MMU is old technology. The breakthrough is moving to serial, and that simply could not be done on slow hardware (do imagine the clock frequency of an HyperTransport stream? 1000Mhz for the original Athlon64, and its 3.2Ghz on the Corei7. 68040s used to run at 25Mhz doubled internally).

“So, you are agreeing that we are working with tech thats been surpassed over 20 years ago?”

And what’s wrong with that? You drive everyday on almost 150 years old tech (the internal combustion engine)…