AMD to Launch Six-Core Processor Next Year

[Rob Williams]

From our front-page news:

Did you read our news post earlier this week regarding AMD's new 40W Opteron 2419 EE and wonder to yourself, "Cool, but where in the heck are the desktop variants?" Well, not surprisingly, there is no definitive answer, which is typical of almost any hardware launch. But, X-bit labs received information that claims we'll see the chips beginning next summer, if all goes well. Alright, that's not too soon, but it is expected.

The cool thing about these Hexa-Core processors is that they should be fully compatible with current AM3 motherboards, and possibly even AM2+. The architecture will allow for a dual-channel memory configuration supporting DDR3-1333 natively, and as the design follows Istanbul on the server side, you could expect to see the chip equipped with 3MB of L2 Cache, 512KB per core, and 6MB of shared L3 cache.

This six-core chip, codenamed "Thuban" (Arab for "Dragon"), might be released alongside some other new hardware, such as the 890FX and 890GX chipsets. These will bring new features to the table such as support for additional S-ATA ports and of course, the S-ATA 6Gbit/s specification. What else will it include? Only AMD seems to know at this point. It's still a ways off, but it shouldn't be too much longer before much more information is revealed.

AMD likely isn't stressing over the release of Thuban quite yet, as Intel isn't exactly prepared to release a desktop six-core chip either. That is scheduled to happen towards the middle of next year as well, with Gulftown, built on the 32nm node. Interestingly, Intel's Hexa-Core, like AMD's, will be fully compatible with the company's recent high-end chipset (X58).

Thuban is a star in the constellation of Draco and it also means "dragon" in Arabian language. The new six-core chip should be compatible with existing AM3 infrastructure (and, quite possibly, even with AM2+ infrastructure with split power plane), it remains to be seen whether Thuban becomes a part of AMD’s current high-end desktop platform called Dragon, or will power the company’s next-generation Leo platform.

Source: X-bit labs​

 

[On_Wisconsin]

Wonder if the performance %-wise will scale as well vs Quad cores like dual cores vs quad cores..

 

[Kougar]

Wonder if the performance %-wise will scale as well vs Quad cores like dual cores vs quad cores..

As long as you can find a six-threaded program or any program that can use six cores, then it will indeed scale. The question isn't really if it will scale, but if you have any programs that could even use it.

 

[Psi*]

I wonder about the per core speed. Even with multi-threaded apps there can still be some features that don't lend to that very well.

 

[Kougar]

I wonder about the per core speed. Even with multi-threaded apps there can still be some features that don't lend to that very well.

Of course. What I said was made with the assumption it was a CPU-centric program. It wouldn't make sense to buy a six-core processor when the programs used are already bottlenecked or constrained by the disk storage system, or are to large to fit within the system RAM.

There really aren't any "common" programs a typical computer user would use that would scale to six cores, this sort of processor is aimed for those that already run their Quads at or near 100% in normal usage scenarios. When talking about this many cores, not even a heavyweight program like Photoshop CS4 or favorite music encoder is going to cut the cake here.

 

[Psi*]

Ha! You do wonder what the motivation is behind all of these multi-core chips is?

I am thinking that the current "common" programs which are heavily user involved (aka slowed down by the user) will never have a reason to multi-thread. Of course the tech marketeers are hoping that we will become fully involved with net multi-media for entertainment and communicating with others.

As much as I embrace new tech, I somehow suspect that video between machines (to replace text of all kinds) will never really happen. Or, the peak in all of that occurred a couple of years ago in other words ... and it was cool but a PITA.

Movies & news & the like might work, but I still wonder. Local processing power will be available, but the ISP still sucks ... not to be too scientific or anything. Past the the issues of the ISP, I have had a dual core Extreme something running for >2 years & have watched many HD videos via it. It processes things nicely at about 60% to 75% of CPU capacity. I had 3 HDs striped for (possibly) best thru put until 1 failed this past spring. After recovering from that, it made no difference running off just 1 SATA3 HD vs the 3. I thought that the system thru put was HD channel bound ... I have no idea.

Sooooo, I am anxious to see how all of this CPU power gets used up in the coming couple of years. I know that my number crunchers are all happy. But that is just me and 1% of the population. On the other hand, I think my communication box is going to be really cheap. And, I like games, but go on about a 5 year cycle between favorites I am just getting over UT2004 ... before was Zaxxon I am still angry that the Mattel game failed that same era.

Dreaming ... what happened to all of the programs that used to predict readability, make suggestions, as well as offer plagiarize warnings from ... 10 years ago? By now I had hoped for programs that would make changes to make me *look good* to be available by now. And, God knows, that would require some serious horse power.

 

[Rob Williams]

Like Quad-Cores, Hexa-Cores are not going to be for everyone. They're not useless, but you have to have very specific reasons to need something more than a Quad-Core. At that point, it's less about "encode a video and play a game" and more of "I need this render done fast". Not all video encodes are bottle-necked by the I/O, so if a codec is heavily multi-threaded, there's real potential to see a gain in performance.

The biggest advantage would be for those running applications that focus more on raw processing and don't need huge I/O, like 3D rendering, and of course, Folding. If we can retain modest power consumption numbers (seems almost unlikely with AMD), then the added performance might find real use by some people.

Of course, they WILL try to market this to gamers, I'm sure of it. But who knows... maybe by that time, there will be more titles with huge AI and physics able to take advantage of more than just two cores.

Dreaming ... what happened to all of the programs that used to predict readability, make suggestions, as well as offer plagiarize warnings from ... 10 years ago? By now I had hoped for programs that would make changes to make me *look good* to be available by now. And, God knows, that would require some serious horse power.

Haha. For some reason, that made me think back to when 1GHz processors were first introduced. A friend of the family said, "What the heck would I need that for? I don't need to launch rockets."... here we are with Quad-Cores and higher reaching 3GHz+. It hasn't even been that long since 1GHz CPUs was released!

 

[Doomsday]

hmmm, this might be in my new gaming rig in the future!