WHAT IS A PROCESSOR?

single chip package that fits in a socket

1 core (not much point in <1 core)

Cores can have functional units, cache, etc. associated with them, just as today Cores can be fast or slow, just as today
Shared

resources

More cache Other integration: Northbridge, memory controllers, high-speed serial links, etc.
One

system interface no matter how many cores

Number of signal pins doesnt scale with number of cores

HISTORY
In

the early 1970s the first Microprocessor was developed by Intel.

It

was a 4 bit machine that was named the 4004

The

4004 was followed by Intels 8008 and 8080, as well as motorolas 6800 and 68000

SINGLE CORE PERFORMANCE

On technique used to increase single core performance was:

Pipelining: beginning other waiting instructions before the first finishes

SINGLE CORE CONTINUED

Another technique was multithreading Multithreading involves execution of two separate threads. Time is divided and interlaced between the two threads in order to simulate simultaneous execution

GROWTH
With each new generation of processors there were several developments such as:
Smaller Faster Increased

size

heat dissipation Greater Consumption of power

PROBLEMS WITH SINGLE CORE

To

execute the tasks faster you must increase the clock time.

Increasing

clock times too high drastically increases power consumption and heat dissipation to extremely high levels, making the processor inefficient.

WHAT ARE DUAL CORE PROCESSORS?

Refers

to a CPU that includes two complete execution cores per physical computer system. Combines two processors and their cache and cache controllers onto a single chip. The two processors can be either located on the same motherboard or on separate boards. The two identical processors are manufactured so they reside side by side on the same die.

REQUIREMENTS OF A DUAL CORE

SYSTEM
The

OS must multithreading.
Software

be

able

to

recognize

must have simultaneous multithreading technology(SMT) written into its code.

A

new motherboard is not necessary as they can be used in existing board if that features the correct socket.

ADVANTAGES
core can boost systems multitasking computing power.
Dual It

provides two separate complete execution cores.

As

each core has its own cache the processor has sufficient resources to handle intensive task in parallel.
Even

without a multithread enabled application dual core processor are beneficial if you are running an OS that supports thread level parallelism or TLP.

DISADVANTAGES
They

do not work at twice the speed as a normal processor. They get only 60-80% more speed. The speed that the computer works at depends on what the user is doing with it. They cost more than single core processors. They are more difficult to manage thermally than lower-density single-core processors.

AMD & INTEL ON DUAL CORE

PROCESSORS
In

the past these two companies were only interested in upping their clock speeds.
Intels

higher clock speed makes it faster than AMD. Both have scaled up the clock speeds of their processors in a very short span of time.
But

they have recently slowed the curve and the reason is heat. Heat is the enemy of processors and higher clock speed means high heat and that means errors.

CONTD

As it takes a lot of power to increase the clock speeds and a processor with that much electricity around the die is prone to noise and errors.

Dual

core processors provided the advantage of increased transistor count without any heat or error problems as the cores run at lower speed than single core processors.
The

resultant increase in parallelism makes for the clock speeds as far as the overall performance is concerned. A threaded approach can extract maximum mileage as many independent threads can be executed simultaneously

CONTD
AMD

has currently two offerings. The dual core AMD opteron processors and AMD Athlon 64X2 Dual core processors.
Both

these processors run in 64bit modes & inter core communication takes place at the CPU speed.
Range

of AMD and Intels processors are as follows

ARE TWO CORES BETTER THAN ONE??

terms

that come up to fuel the dual core debate; pipeline, cache and bus.
Think

of the pipeline like a conveyor belt. The data is processed sequentially one after the other.

CONTD
The

AMD processor pipeline is shorter than the INTEL processor pipeline and this is one of the reasons why AMD runs at a lower clock speed.

CONTD
In single core processors:
The

processor cache is running at the same clock speed as the processor itself. If the processor has to reach out through the bus to main system memory then it must slow down to that bus speed. A bus speed of 400 MHz is five times slower than the 2 GHz of CPU.

Intel Pentium D:
The

"D" in Pentium D stands for "dual-core.

These

processors include up to 2 megabytes (MB) of level-2 (L2) cache and up to 1066 megahertz (MHz) of bus speed.
Clock

speeds range from 1.6 gigahertz (GHz) to 3.2

GHz.

The

specifications are similar to Core i3 with 4MB of L2 "Smart Cache" and 2.5 GT/s bus speeds. Their clock speeds start at 3.2 GHz and run up to 3.6 GHz.

CONCLUSION
In

the next years the trend will go to multicore processors more and more. The main reason is that they are faster than single-core processors and they can be still improved.