frameworkx.com — It has always been a frequent question "Will I benefit from multiple processors?" With the growing popularity of dual core processors, the topic is more important than ever! Will multiple processors or a dual core processor be beneficial, and what are the differences between them? These are the questions this article will attempt to lay to rest.
Jul 16, 2006 View in Crawl 4
cjweeksJul 17, 2006
All this talk of processors...it's hard drives and memory that are slowing us down for most people. The processors are always waiting on the hard drive....
asdf25Jul 17, 2006
Almost:4. Dual core processors allow faster communication between the two cores than does a dual processor setup.And the Conroe shared cache seems like a pretty big advantage too.
chandonJul 17, 2006
Here's a simple counterexample for claims that we have enough hard disk space / processing power / internet bandwidth: High Definition Video.HDTV content weighs in at over a gig for a single 1-hour episode of a TV show, and it will noticably tax a current mid-range computer system to play. As video quality and compression both increase, both the hard disk and processor requirements will increase.
inkswampJul 17, 2006
I'll probably get buried by Windows zealots for this, but I was under the impression that Windows' SMP capabilities were basically grafted on kludges and not very impressive as a result. Wouldn't an article like this be much more demonstrative on an OS that was designed to use SMP effectively? Why did they choose to do this on Windows?
zankyJul 17, 2006
@AgretRTA!!HEADER:Written on 3/25/06 by William GeorgeSource: <a class="user" href="http://www.pugetsystems.com">http://www.pugetsystems.com</a>FOOTER:Written on 3/25/06 by William GeorgeSource: <a class="user" href="http://www.pugetsystems.com">http://www.pugetsystems.com</a>clicking on the source brings you to the site, print friendly version of the article.
mullerJul 17, 2006
I don't think you can really fairly compare the Mac Book to the Opteron desktop as a measure of whether dual core or dual processors is faster... there's other limiting factors in laptops, like the limited bus. It slows things down a bit. If you wanted a better test, you should take a look at a full Intel mac tower when you can get your hands on one and see how that compares to your Opteron.
Closed AccountJul 30, 2006
Wow. Way to bury all the comments which suggest that CPU speed still does matter. What the hell are all of you thinking?Yes, faster hard disks would help as they are THE bottleneck in many cases. Nobody is suggesting that is not the case. That's precisly why caching as a technique exists: to prevent redundant reads because all disk reads are slow. But you can't deny that there are tasks where CPU performance is king, because lots of calculations are done but minimal I/O bandwidth is used.I have a hard time understanding what exactly the motive for burying comments that acknowledge this is. It is in fact the parent, with his assertion that the CPU is /always/ waiting on the hard disk, that is incorrect.
rkuchikiAug 6, 2006
You mean "welcome to digg, dumbass"
mgmirkinJun 12, 2008
Is it just me or is the link wrong (just goes to a list of articles, on which the blog in question does not appear)? Or did it get moved?Try here:<a class="user" href="http://www.frameworkx.com/blogpost.aspx?id=1&c=20">http://www.frameworkx.com/blogpost.aspx?id=1&c=20</a>Cheers,~Michael