Introduction

While we are a bit late on our WinHEC coverage, there was one presentation that stood out in particular and is worth talking about especially in the context of this week's slew of reviews on AMD's Athlon 64 X2 line up. AMD hosted a talk on multi-core technology that focused primarily on Opterons but the issues discussed are pertinent to both the desktop and server markets.

Single vs Dual Core

For single threaded applications like most games, look for AMD to continue pushing single core processors like the FX line up to gamers because raw clockspeed will still be king. Initially dual cores will be aimed at power users and the server market. Current pricing levels will keep end users on single core processors or possibly push them towards Intel's lower clocked dual processor solutions. One of the comments that really stuck out was the declaration that dual core is not a fad but is the future.

Moore's Law Isn't Really Dead

A quick search on Moore's law on major news sites in the last few months will undoubtedly bring up a slew of hits on how Moore's law cannot keep up and how the days of doubling performance and the doubling of transistors is over. AMD's take on Moore's law is that it will continue on for some time yet, but the approach will be different. Instead of doubling performance through the doubling of clockspeed, the doubling of performance will come from the increase in the number of cores; doubling the number of cores on a processor will also lead to the number of transistors doubling so while clock speed may not be scaling like in the hey day of early 2000s, performance should still theoretically double.