From Quad-Core to Infinity
So the Intel QX6700 is upon us, for those not in the know, it’s not really a true ‘quad’ core processor, but a dual-dual processor. Two separate pieces of silicon (each containing an E6700 Dual core CPU) on a single physical package. But for all intensive purposes it is four physical CPUs in one drop-in LGA775 package.
The QX6700 marks the way forward to more mainstream ‘Quad’ CPUs in Q1-Q2 2007 and true Quad CPUs (one silicon slice, shared cache etc) in Q3-Q4 2007 from both Intel and AMD. If we believe everything we read we can expect up to 32 cores per processor in only a few years, which brings me to my problem…….
The software market is far from ready for multiple core CPUs on the desktop.
The crux of the problem is that the vast majority of applications are not designed to work with multiple cores. Additionally the programmers who write software are also not ‘designed to work with multiple cores’. Writing an application to use multiple CPU cores is no easy task, and based on personal experience I’d not be suprised if the vast majority of programmers today will never be able to write such an application.
There are some applications today that can take good advantage of multiple cores but these are, in the main, high-end graphics packages or specialist server software. Other applications tend to be written for a single core, with only occassional use of a second core and no more.
The popularity of dual-core is however justified, simply because it effectively allows the application you are working on to have a core to itself, whilst all those other things, such as virus-checkers can trundle along on the other core. But this doesn’t scale, you certainly don’t need a ‘whole core’ for each application, for the vast majority of people, dual-core is more than enough.
So what’s the answer? That’s the worrying thing, there is no easy answer, if there is a shortage of people capable of writing applications for multiple cores, it will be a very slow road for software….. whilst hardware races ahead.
So by all means enjoy the artificial benchmarking scores a new quad-core processor will bring you, but unless you use scare and specialised software regularly the benefits of quad and beyond will be minimal.
