AMD’s Counter to Conroe, Anti-Hyper-Threading
06.28.06 - 08:13pm
When I first heard this I laughed. Hard. When looking over how AMD and Intel have evolved over the last 6 years I could almost safely say AMD and Intel have swapped play books. Intel used to claim their processors would scale to 10GHz, now we are looking at a top of 4GHz. AMD used to work on more efficient processor cycles, now they are just scaling their processors higher and higher with new manufacturing processes. Intel has decided to completely drop its old plans by creating an entirely new line of processors that are based around a new architecture while AMD will continue to optimize and scale their processors. Talk about a complete reversal of roles.
However AMD might have one saving grace, Anti-Hyper-Threading. While some people might say this is ridiculous, there has definitely been some thought put into the process. The majority of video games on the market and for the near future only support a single processor. By combining the power of two processors into a single logical processor you could potentially maximize your single threaded processing power. This would really help by not making clockspeed the limiting factor in a gaming system. When combined with the new 4×4 platform gamers would potentially be able to merge 4 cores into a single logical processor. Unfortunately there are possible side effects that will occur in the software industry that could be very detrimental to future developement. If coders can now have a platform that only deals with a single “fast” core then work being done in multi-core coding might grind to a halt. This could potentially reverse a lot of the work that is currently being done in integrating multiple threads into video games. I personally don’t know how well this process will scale but I begin to wonder what will happen when processors begin to have 4 cores each, and with 2 of them on a board, how will this deal with 8 processors?
According to X-bit labs Intel might have been working on a similar process called Core Multiplexing Technology. While the information is very sparse and mostly rumors just flying around, it sounds like Intel is working on a similar process that could either combine cores or let a single core utilize the beefy 4MB of cache on the new Conroe chips. If Intel manages to create something that performs similar to Anti-Hyper-Threading then it would effectively nullify this bonus for AMD and Intel would sit even higher on the current performance throne. It seems that a lot will be resting on when Conroe releases and these new processes are also released.
AM2 Overclocking
Previously I posted a few results with AM2 overclocking and the reports were dismal to say the least. While the platform is very mature and stable, there wasn’t any extra headroom in the processors and motherboards at launch. However, Asus must have found the right tweaks to implement on their new M2N32-SLI board. Perhaps it is the 8 phase power solution, perhaps it is the chipset, perhaps it is just Asus’ high quality components, but whatever it is Asus definitely has taken the AMD performance lead. With a completely passively cooled motherboard with high-end heatpipe coolers, this board was capable of pulling a 350MHz HT overclock. Previous s939 boards were capable of around 320-330MHz and even then it was more luck of the draw than guaranteed performance. I believe with a slow fan blowing over the chipsets and phase cooling on the processor we could see some sick clocks with this new board. I am sure more results will begin to pour in if Conroe doesn’t steal all the attention.
Over the next few days you may notice a few changes to the website, they will be explained in further detail in a separate post, just giving a heads to my daily readers though. Also if you have noticed something is missing or you want to see something implemented do let me know. A perfect example was my Project page, I forgot to add it when I moved over and a diligent reader brought it to my attention that it was missing. It is great to know that people read this, thanks for your time.
Reference Articles
X-Bit Labs Anti-Hyper-Threading
X-Bit Labs Intel Core Multiplexing
Anandtech Review of M2N32-SLI
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