Any suggestions, please? -UPDATE - BUT JOY

[Liam Proven]

On 15 September 2010 14:26, Basil Chupin <blchupin at iinet.net.au> wrote:
> On 15/09/2010 22:13, Christopher Chan wrote:
>> Unless you want to wait for the Fusion...
>>
>
> Cold fusion or nuclear?

AMD currently makes triple-core chips as well as quad-core, which
Intel doesn't. More than ~2 cores are of little benefit to most people
for most tasks.

AMD also makes excellent GPUs, which Intel doesn't. (Intel GPUs are
very poor for 3D work, although they are adequate for most
office/business use.)

What AMD is trying to do is make a CPU where one of the cores is a GPU
core, on the same die as several CPU cores. This is calls "Fusion".

Intel has fudged this with the Core i3/i5 offerings with an onboard
GPU - it's on a 2nd, separate die in the same package.
http://www.anandtech.com/show/2901

It is the same "cheat" they did with the first Pentium 4D chips - 2
CPU dies in a single package, so it seemed to be a dual-core, beating
AMD to market, but actually the 2 cores could not communicate
efficiently and it put out a huge amount of heat.

In this case, Intel's offering is only suitable for low-end machines.
In many cases the GPU will just be disabled.

But AMD's will be a good, powerful GPU, suitable for use with GPGPU
code - the vector-based maths operations that can be run on a GPU core
today (e.g. Folding at home).

It will be a big step forward for AMD, but I suspect not enough to
save the company. I would be very happy to be proved wrong, though.

-- 
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