The reason for Intel to demo 80-core CPU

[qcmadness]

The only reason I think is to steal the limelight from AMD's K8L (K10) details :lol:

 

[gOJDO]

To show superiority over the little fish in the swimming pool.
People were saying: "OMG! a 80-core CPU!!!! performing a teraflop on a single CPU! WOW!"
Between people are the investors, who will think that Intel have a bright future and are a better option to go with.

 

[heartview]

The only reason I think is to steal the limelight from AMD's K8L (K10) details :lol:

While I agree it was in part a stab at AMD, it was most likely just a way to let the world know that Intel is currently at the top of their game and plan to stay there.

 

[maina231]

Either this is a ploy by Intel to totally destroy AMD or make us pay more! Just take a look at the dual cores! they haven't found out areas of applications except for the Multimedia , video photo editing and some other benchmarking tools. How many games are optimized to use 2, 3 or 4 cores even those 64bit extensions. 80cores = 1Tera FLop thats nothing compared to the possibilities if the coders can make USE of those 80 cores! maybe we will get bigger flops.

 

[chunkymonster]

superiority over the little fish...stab at AMD...oh please...way too much thought into a tech demo...I wonder what you would say if it was AMD that demo'd the 80core proc instead...

It can't be something as innocent to demo new tech like the article said it was...that wouldn't give anyone food for fodder.

 

[heartview]

superiority over the little fish...stab at AMD...oh please...way too much thought into a tech demo...I wonder what you would say if it was AMD that demo'd the 80core proc instead...

It can't be something as innocent to demo new tech like the article said it was...that wouldn't give anyone food for fodder.

For the record, my stab comment was because of the timing. The more Intel puts out there about multicore the more pressure that puts on AMD.

Intel could have easily waited until next phase of this experiment to deliver the news, but they didn't. And you would have to be pretty naive to think that Intel released this information without first thinking how they could use it against AMD (their chief rival).

 

[CaptRobertApril]

The only reason I think is to steal the limelight from AMD's K8L (K10) details :lol:

I dunno... I think it's pretty strange that Intel has demoed an 80 core before AMD has demoed K10! :lol:

 

[weskurtz81]

well,

I'm not to impressed with this 80 core cpu. If Sony claims that cell can do 1.8 tflops, with what amounts to 8-10 cores? And, it takes Intel 80 to do it.... phhhft. See what I am saying, this is just like all the prototype cars that don't get released, if they were going to release it, something with that many cores, would have to be competitive to other products in that market.

Now, don't start flaming me, just don't see a point other than to say "hey look what we can do"..... Something that is way off, and by the time the market for such a cpu arrives, the industry will have changed quite a bit. I guess scientific would be a good place to start.

Still though, if it were something special, you would think it could out pace the Cell.

wes

 

[chunkymonster]

superiority over the little fish...stab at AMD...oh please...way too much thought into a tech demo...I wonder what you would say if it was AMD that demo'd the 80core proc instead...

It can't be something as innocent to demo new tech like the article said it was...that wouldn't give anyone food for fodder.

For the record, my stab comment was because of the timing. The more Intel puts out there about multicore the more pressure that puts on AMD.

Intel could have easily waited until next phase of this experiment to deliver the news, but they didn't. And you would have to be pretty naive to think that Intel released this information without first thinking how they could use it against AMD (their chief rival).

Wow! That's quite a conspiracy theory. Of course there's no way in the world that this could have been just coincidence or the fact that the timing just worked out so that when an R&D team unrelated to the desktop side of the business finished their product and decided to give a demo. Nah, it couldn't be that, it had to be a case of Intel Bigwigs telling the 80core proc team to wait until the perfect moment while calculating and plotting the most exact best possible moment to release the demo to maximize stealing the spotlight from AMD. :roll:

 

[stemnin]

It's not the same, not comparable.

 

[shinigamiX]

The only reason I think is to steal the limelight from AMD's K8L (K10) details :lol:

I dunno... I think it's pretty strange that Intel has demoed an 80 core before AMD has demoed K10! :lol:
I still think K9 woulda sounded better.
"I just got a K9 for my computer."
"You sick bastard."

 

[ElMoIsEviL]

The only reason I think is to steal the limelight from AMD's K8L (K10) details :lol:

Ummm probably partially that. But the main reason is to steer would-be investors away from AMD and towards Intel.

Intel has been more forward thinking as of late. They have the Core-Logic and Manufacturing superiority whole AMD have the platform implementation and Core-Logic communications superiority.

Investors know that consumers preffer 80 Cores over HyperTransport 3 when infact if the two were put together we'd have one powerful overall system.

 

[heartview]

Wow! That's quite a conspiracy theory. Of course there's no way in the world that this could have been just coincidence or the fact that the timing just worked out so that when an R&D team unrelated to the desktop side of the business finished their product and decided to give a demo. Nah, it couldn't be that, it had to be a case of Intel Bigwigs telling the 80core proc team to wait until the perfect moment while calculating and plotting the most exact best possible moment to release the demo to maximize stealing the spotlight from AMD. :roll:

Ok... this was a PRESS RELEASE. Press = publicity. Publicity is filtered as much as possibly in any large corporation by their PR department. Why do you think large companies even have PR departments?

I am in no way saying that Intel planned this whole thing, but you can sure as hell bet that their PR department put as much spin on the news as they could prior to it being released (assuming they were given the chance). This is not a conspiracy, this is corporate life in America (but, perhaps, they are not that dissimilar?).

 

[rodney_ws]

I think it was meant to show Intel's superiority in efficiency. Since the Opteron/A64 came out AMD has held a lead in that area and its share in the server space has grown accordingly. For Intel to make a chip with less transistors that uses let energy AND outperform pretty much everything out there... well, that's damned impressive.

I'm looking at that 80 core CPU about the same way I look at concept cars... yep, they're nice... but when can I buy one?

 

[chunkymonster]

I am impressed at the high level of insight demostrated by the posts in this thread. Any more insider knowledge into what and why Intel is doing what they are and the SEC will begin an investigation.

 

[CaptRobertApril]

well,

I'm not to impressed with this 80 core cpu. If Sony claims that cell can do 1.8 tflops, with what amounts to 8-10 cores? And, it takes Intel 80 to do it.... phhhft. See what I am saying, this is just like all the prototype cars that don't get released, if they were going to release it, something with that many cores, would have to be competitive to other products in that market.

Now, don't start flaming me, just don't see a point other than to say "hey look what we can do"..... Something that is way off, and by the time the market for such a cpu arrives, the industry will have changed quite a bit. I guess scientific would be a good place to start.

Still though, if it were something special, you would think it could out pace the Cell.

wes

Nope, no flame coming. Just a statement that it seems pretty unbalanced when one competitor actually shows a running 80 core and the other can't get it's respective s*** together to demo a fairly conventional CPU that really doesn't have too much that is revolutionary, new and different (especially when compared to that 80 core monster). I don't care what AMD says, K10 is vaporware and will remain vaporware until it is physically and publicly demoed! And while on the subject of flames, this post is being typed on a San Diego 3700.

 

[heartview]

I am impressed at the high level of insight demostrated by the posts in this thread. Any more insider knowledge into what and why Intel is doing what they are and the SEC will begin an investigation.

Intel is behaving no differently than AMD in any of this. Do you honestly think behavior or motives like this in the business world are uncommon?

 

[NightlySputnik]

The only reason I think is to steal the limelight from AMD's K8L (K10) details :lol:

Just like AMD/IBM showing off their 32nm process 1 day after Intel showed their.

That's the name of the game!!!!

 

[dsidious]

Either this is a ploy by Intel to totally destroy AMD or make us pay more! Just take a look at the dual cores! they haven't found out areas of applications except for the Multimedia , video photo editing and some other benchmarking tools. How many games are optimized to use 2, 3 or 4 cores even those 64bit extensions. 80cores = 1Tera FLop thats nothing compared to the possibilities if the coders can make USE of those 80 cores! maybe we will get bigger flops.

What the heck, just because games are a bit retarded right now that doesn't mean we should stick with single cores. There are lots of types of software other than games that do or will benefit from multiple cores. I think Intel and AMD are doing the right thing, pushing toward more cores instead of more GHz, and it's the software industry that needs to catch up.

The 80-core processor is totally irrelevant for games, it's not 80x86 compatible. However, as Intel explained, it will be very useful for things like machine vision and AI. Their example was "program your computer to show you slam dunks by your favourite basketball player". I can think of other uses like: program your computer to sound the alarm if a guy with a gun under his coat enters the bank, or a guy from a list of known criminals, etc. I'm sure games will eventually use this technology too.

 

[KlamathBFG]

I personally think it's simple marketing Multi-core / processor are here and have been here for some time yet developers are continuing to produce applications that are single core focused. (Which make sense for a whole host of reasons).

I think all Intel is trying to say is there is no going back, multi-core is the future, stop thinking about 1 core or how you scale your application to work on 2 but starting thinking n core.

I think in that light (ie grabbing the spotlight and saying the world will change) the demo was a total success. What's more is if that is the motive its not even a stab at AMD (although whoever decided on the specific timing of the announcement may have had that as an additional goal) but if anything will help AMD as much as Intel.

If Intel & AMD can make developers adjust all apps to be n core then guess what, the overhead of managing n core will probably mean they do not run well on 1 core meaning just when many people in business were debating if they really needed to continue 3 year H/W replacement cycles AMD & Intel have created a new need.

Not just good for Intel but good for everyone in the industry including the software writers.

 

[heartview]

I personally think it's simple marketing Multi-core / processor are here and have been here for some time yet developers are continuing to produce applications that are single core focused. (Which make sense for a whole host of reasons).

I think all Intel is trying to say is there is no going back, multi-core is the future, stop thinking about 1 core or how you scale your application to work on 2 but starting thinking n core.

I think in that light (ie grabbing the spotlight and saying the world will change) the demo was a total success. What's more is if that is the motive its not even a stab at AMD (although whoever decided on the specific timing of the announcement may have had that as an additional goal) but if anything will help AMD as much as Intel.

If Intel & AMD can make developers adjust all apps to be n core then guess what, the overhead of managing n core will probably mean they do not run well on 1 core meaning just when many people in business were debating if they really needed to continue 3 year H/W replacement cycles AMD & Intel have created a new need.

Not just good for Intel but good for everyone in the industry including the software writers.

I just want to say I agree with this and make one further comment on "single core" apps. Much of what slows down a programmer's ability to make multi-threaded applications is the UI code in windows. There are a great deal of things in the GUI that must be dealt with in the primary thread of a process. Even if you spawned a new thread for every window in your application you would still have to synchronize events to those forms with the main thread. In this sense, Windows makes it difficult on the programmer to multi-thread anything that also requires user input. So that pretty much limits what can be moved to other threads without causing major complications in code.

 

[sonoran]

The only reason I think is to steal the limelight from AMD's K8L (K10) details :lol:

Why don't you go ask Justin Rattner (Intel CTO) what the reason was? Here's his blog on ZDNet: http://blogs.zdnet.com/OverTheHorizon/?p=13

 

[WR]

Too much politicization/conspiracy theorizing for my taste. Intel is only concerned with its own growth/prosperity - it doesn't care directly about AMD or any other competitor. If it has to help AMD to secure substantial business or to avoid legal trouble, you'll see it do exactly that.

A tech demo is to drum up interest in a company's products and/or to provide guidance to partners in related fields. Both objectives are important for Intel, and the 80-core demo touched on both. Side effects of doing this successfully include raising a company's stock and helping to convince both purchasers and suppliers to support a company's products on the premise that they contain superior technology and will be around for a while.

On the technical level, I think the 80-core demo showed that Intel is responding to the well-placed concern that its aging FSB interface is starting to become a bottleneck, starting with server applications scaling. While such a robust interconnection may not be out for a while, the fruits of that research could trickle into dual- or quad-core chips much sooner.

But the 80-core device does not compete with K8L/K10. The former isn't even an announced product - there's no release timeframe, no platform specification, no assurance that what comes to market will look anything remotely like that. The latter, on the other hand, is a 2-4 core/thread x86/x64 processor already at pre-release steppings and just a few months from market.

That 80-core announcement may have stolen some of the thunder from K10, but remember that aside from AMD, Intel also competes with IBM (process development/design/HPC), Sony-Toshiba (console logic), and Nvidia-ATI (graphics processing).

 

[apache_lives]

The only reason I think is to steal the limelight from AMD's K8L (K10) details :lol:

I dunno, atleast they actually have working samples

 

[chunkymonster]

Too much politicization/conspiracy theorizing for my taste. Intel is only concerned with its own growth/prosperity - it doesn't care directly about AMD or any other competitor. If it has to help AMD to secure substantial business or to avoid legal trouble, you'll see it do exactly that.

A tech demo is to drum up interest in a company's products and/or to provide guidance to partners in related fields. Both objectives are important for Intel, and the 80-core demo touched on both. Side effects of doing this successfully include raising a company's stock and helping to convince both purchasers and suppliers to support a company's products on the premise that they contain superior technology and will be around for a while.

On the technical level, I think the 80-core demo showed that Intel is responding to the well-placed concern that its aging FSB interface is starting to become a bottleneck, starting with server applications scaling. While such a robust interconnection may not be out for a while, the fruits of that research could trickle into dual- or quad-core chips much sooner.

But the 80-core device does not compete with K8L/K10. The former isn't even an announced product - there's no release timeframe, no platform specification, no assurance that what comes to market will look anything remotely like that. The latter, on the other hand, is a 2-4 core/thread x86/x64 processor already at pre-release steppings and just a few months from market.

That 80-core announcement may have stolen some of the thunder from K10, but remember that aside from AMD, Intel also competes with IBM (process development/design/HPC), Sony-Toshiba (console logic), and Nvidia-ATI (graphics processing).

Cheers to someone who actually gets it!