Intel Shows Off at Developer Forum - Quad Core Trade offs

Intel appears to particularly satisfy that it's quad core processors will be hitting the market way before the AMD's quad cores. The 2 organization are having a very different go at 4 cores on one chip.

Intel is adding 2 dual-core chips jointly to create its quad core processor. Kentsfield, the Core2 Extreme quad core processor, is made up of 2 Conroe chips, at the same time Clovertown, the Xeon 5300, use 2 Woodcrest chips. AMD, though, is planning to put 4 processing cores on one piece of silicon.

Intel's method has its own benefits, and being first is one of them. Steve Smith, director of group operations in Intel's Digital Enterprise Group, stated "We expect to ship very large volumes of quad-core in servers before we expect our competitors to ship any." Smith cited other benefits. As the company can use the same chips for both dual core and quad core products, it's simpler to match the product mix to the market. Its productions are also improved. "We have over a 20% growth in good quad cores per wafer by picking the 2-die multichip package method. That proves to be cost effective for Intel of about 10 % in production cost," Smith stated.

AMD have different way of thinking. It predicts that Intel's chips will be heated party easily, because computer communication bottlenecks, and force Intel's road maps to become overly difficult. And at least with the heat and power factor it does make a sense. For instance, if one begins with 2 Woodcrest chips that usually uses 65 watts, will end up with a Clovertown chip that uses 80 watts. If 2 two Woodcrests use 80 watts, the Clovertown will use 120 watts.

However, Intel is planning to announce the power problem. The Kentsfield chips, Core 2 Quad, will use only 105 watts. And 50 watt Clovertowns are believed to come out sometime next year. But Intel's method in general appears to be get out the powerful chips first, worry about effectiveness and cutting the heat. What the Nehalem, coming hitting sometime in 2008 and depending on the 45nm design, will be like as far as power use is a thing to wonder.