Quad Battles

As you know Intel is going to release a quad-core processor in 2007. And its name is Yorkfield. AMD don’t want to be an overtaking, so its answer will be Altair (don’t remind you anything?) As always AMD wants to differ from Intel. Let’s see, what they are (differences). At first it’s the technology process. AMD still undertake 65 nm process, meanwhile Intel already has some prototypes on 45 nm. So the size of the cores will be corresponding. Next difference is in cache. AMD has dedicated L2 cache for each core (4×512kb). Yorkfield has common L2 cache, which will be shared between cores. The capacity is 12 mb(2×6 mb). And the size of the processor will be dramatically smaller than Altair’s. I have forgotten to mention: Altair will have common L3 cache for 2 mb. So in sum we have 4 mb cache for Altair and 12 mb for Yorkfield. If count up all megabytes for each core Altair will fail. 2mb+512 kb vs. 12 mb. But we’ll see how Intel will realize sharing the cache between cores.
And the last difference is in instructions. Yorkfield will have new 50 instructions called SSE4. Who can tell me, what advantages has SSE3?
The results of the battle we’ll see next year. But be aware - the battle has already begun

Written by mente on October 5th, 2006 with no comments.
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