Tekky Post #1: Brief Introduction to CPU Multi-processing
Well I did say that I’ll be going mainstream so as much as I hate it, please do mind the very cranky English. As I’ve promised, I will do some ‘techie’ articles for MasterDiwa.com forums just to enlighten everybody on the things that are happening in and out of the technological stuffs nowadays. Take note that I am not really that much of a geek or something; and I am no pro whatsoever. All accounts being stated here are fruits of thorough research and years of experience on getting my hands grimed with PC parts starting from my “Socket A” Cyrix M-200 pc to my currently overclocked “socket AM2” Athlon X2.
So without further ado, the first thing that I want to discuss this week is all about “CPU Multi-Processing”.
The Need for Speed…
Before, if you were as young as me, people would often brag about with their neighbors or classmates or anyone who understands anything about computers on how fast their computer are and on how far they have managed to overclock it to kingdom come. Back in those days, around the time of the much heralded Intel Pentium 3 vs. AMD Athlon rivalry, everyone was on the lookout on who would go past the 1 Gigahertz processing-speed mark first; and when they did (all the way to Intel Pentium 4 Extreme 3Ghz), every geek and the world was happy.
But all that brawn would hit a wall eventually, because these babies were HOT; in a not so Paris Hilton kind of way. By the time everyone was running blazing fast computers playing games like the first generation “Need for Speed” and “WarCraft 3”, engineers were already smashing their heads together on how to make the already hot and crispy “CPU Processors” faster without making them hotter than hell. So they needed to come up with a better solution before everyone gets toasty…
Two Heads are Better than One…
Contrary to popular belief, the first one who unveiled the first true Dual-Core design was neither Intel nor AMD; it was IBM’s “POWER4 PowerPC” architecture. The said processor was specially optimized for server usage and was the very same design that was slapped in the then very powerful “Power Mac G5” way back in the year 2000.
The idea behind such architecture was not to speed everything by brawn; they found a better way by making two actual processors work side-by-side as one single CPU. Thus making things work faster and cooler without sacrificing heat and other technological issues.
Macintosh power Mac users actually had a 5-year advantage against PC users because it was just on April 2005 when AMD released their own server-based Dual-Core “Opteron” with Intel releasing their own “Xeon” variants a few months later. Support for home-based PC operating systems (your beloved windows) was also a bit late because “Windows XP” was the first of its kind to support multi-processing technology for the current Intel “Pentium 4 Extreme” and AMD “Athlon 64 X2” processors during that time.
And the legacy continues…
The trend is still followed nowadays, as Quad-Core processors (four CPU’s) are already a norm to workstations and some personal computers. Intel takes the step ahead as it finally unveils to the public its Octo-Core (eight CPU’s) pioneer christened under the name “Nehalem”; which again is a sight to behold for almost all people who knows anything about computers. AMD’s current “Phenom” line-up however is currently offering power-saving Triple-Core variants for those who are eco-friendly in mind.
Technology these days is so fast that we were able to achieve what people before attained in a lifetime. Thanks to such technology, computers were no longer Cabinet-Sized contraptions that need a decent power-plant to function. Today, it all boils down to something so small it can fit into your hand; and on how many “workers” it has inside.
Tags: dual-core, multi-processing
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