Intel's Dual-core strategy, 75% by end 2006 306
DigitumDei writes "Intel is moving ahead rapidly with their dual core chips, anticipating 75% of their chip sales to be dual core chips by the end of 2006. With AMD also starting to push their dual core solutions, how long until applications make full use of this. Some applications already make good use of multiple cpu's and of course multiple applications running at the same time instantly benifit. Yet the most cpu intensive applications for the average home machine, games, still mostly do not take advantage of this. When game manufacturers start to release games designed to take advantage of this, are we going to see a huge increase in game complexity/detail or is this benifit going to be less than Intel and AMD would have you believe?"
Solitaire??? (Score:5, Funny)
Games do take advantage of having a second cpu (Score:5, Funny)
It would be interesting if games were rewritten to run with the game logic on one core, the graphics on another core and the networking code on a third core of a multicore chip...
Hey. You could even have a mega-multicore chip and do first person shooters with realtime raytracing... each core is responsible for raytracing a small area of the screen. I'm sure that there's a company working on this. I saw a demo video in a computer graphics lecture. I'll have to check my notes.
cue the spell-checker jokes (Score:3, Funny)
or is this benifit going to be less
how long will it be before dual core CPUs boost slashdot editor's ability to spell-check?
Me too (Score:5, Funny)
Re:fp (Score:4, Funny)
in other news... (Score:2, Funny)
global warming expected to increase by 75% by the end of 2006
Good Thing For Number Crunching (Score:2, Funny)
As anyone who works with number crunching apps will tell you, having two cores seriously improves your work quality.
Not because number crunchings apps are taking advantage of dual cores.
It's becasue now I can set one core to work on those wicked hard numerical calculations while I kick back and watch movies and play music for a few hours. Bliss!
Nevertheless it would be nice if there was an easier way to make apps use multiple cores. I'd love to be able speed up my crunching by getting a program to use both cores, intuitavely, but I don't expect this to happen any time soon. Surely there has to be easier ways of making apps thread compliant?
Re:Games do take advantage of having a second cpu (Score:3, Funny)
At present, the SWORD robot is operated with a thirty-pound control unit with two joysticks, buttons and a video screen. I wonder how much the current control module looks like a playstation portable?
2Times the Spam, Trojans and Viruses (Score:5, Funny)
I think all that power will used in the same way it always is. Malcontents will write more sophisticated malware. MS will release more shiny glittery gewgaws that do nothing except open up more security holes and antimalware vendors will write more complex and unwieldy antimalware applications. In the meantime all the corporate suits will demand more cumbersome elaborate corporate apps that are specifically written for dual core systems thereby requiring parallel track applications to be maintained while the old machines the suits abandoned still get cycled through the organization for 3 years. And for the first 12-16 months hardware vendors will experience hardware QA and BIOS screw-up hell as they try to appease the 15 year olds in the focus groups who demand 1337 dual core hawtness!!! It will suck and Intel will make make billions.
Re:Games do take advantage of having a second cpu (Score:5, Funny)
Probably from a recent Mac users meeting! I've gone to those things, and you see these people who do nothing but run Photoshop all day long skip around and say "Intel is bad because its thegmented!" and other nonsense.
Re:Games do take advantage of having a second cpu (Score:1, Funny)