jmke

AMD's official line on Bulldozer is that it's a "third way" between traditional multicore and simultaneous multithreading (SMT). In the former type of design (also called chip multiprocessing, or CMP), each concurrently running thread runs on a separate core; contrast this to SMT, where two or more threads can share the same core by executing simultaneously.


AMD pitches Bulldozer as a middle ground between these two approaches, where two threads share a single front-end but have separate integer execution resources. After looking closely at Bulldozer, it's best described as a new form of SMT—AMD's "third way" description isn't inaccurate, but it's most useful to think of Bulldozer as an approach to SMT that builds on what has come before.
http://arstechnica.com/business/news...ca mpaign=rss

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Oberon

That is most definitely an excavator, not a bulldozer.


Much better.

leeghoofd

lol, most people react to the article about the bulldozer/excavator thing... rarely about the CPU/Tech itself...

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Oberon

Haha, I didn't even read the article, so I guess you're right!

jmke

I'd love to see AMD get into SSD market for the end-user market
for the simple reason that that's the area which is current the bottleneck of most PCs;

a quad core 3ghz PC with 8-16Gb ram and 2-4TB 600Mb/s+ SSD setup
means instant on application launch, instant switch multitasking

I don't know about you, but I find CPU speed upgrades have stagnated these past several years;

the biggest jump I can recall is going from Athlon 64 to Core 2 Duo.
Now if you build a new machine with Core 2 Duo @ >2.5ghz and 4GB ram you have a fast machine, especially when combined with an SSD.

for gaming, yes, you will benefit from more cores and newer core technology; but even that is up for discussion, raw CPU power is not was is holding back gaming performance;

GPU performance has also stagnated if you keep below 24" resolutions (lower than 1920x1200); a single GTX 480 or HD 5870 rips through every game when run at 1600x1200, even with AA applied.
but them in SLI and there are no bottlenecks to be removed with current gen hardware;

HardOCP has proven that PCIe 2.0 x4 provides enough bandwidth for SLI/CF; so expensive gaming motherboards are not a requirement nor a bottleneck to be removed;

we end up with what? PC market evolution has come almost to a stand still performance wise in most areas; for laptops there's always the battery vs performance issue, so there's still a lot of improvement there, that doesn't really benefits desktop's raw performance; handheld and iphones tech is also "hot", but again, not very interesting. Woop ti doo that IDTECH4 engine runs on iphone; doesn't matter, because you won't spend hours playing on that platform; it has to run very good on a new platform and actually drive you to optimize your PC to extract the best gaming experience...

add in the consoles and you get stuck with mediocre ports which are "ok" gameplay wise if the controls are intelligently remapped, but at the same time these ports only help the PC hardware stagnation; why buy €500 (HD5970) VGA card, if no game requires more than a €210 VGA card (GTX 460)

PC hardware sites are on the list of extinction as time progresses and PC hardware advances continue to stagnate; it's only a matter of time.

The rule is: Evolve or go Extinct.

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jmke

CPU Coolers have stagnated also btw;

Scythe Ninja 3 CPU Cooler: The Legend Returns?

same performance as the 2005 model.

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Oberon

I'm glad I went with the Mugen in my HTPC. Niiiice and quiet.