Intel Quad-Core Cheats
By shipping its first quad-core processors in December, Intel is beating AMD by at least six months. AMD doesn't expect to deliver its first quad until mid-2007. But upon closer examination, Intel's quads are actually pairs of dual-core dies slapped together in the same chip package, whereas AMD's will truly integrate four cores on a single die.
With Intel's architecture, the resultant is poor integration and poor performance, as all core-to-core communications must squeeze through the slowe front-side bus instead of through tightly integrated interconnects.
Our recommendation is to simply stay away from Intel's "stopgap measure" products until it rolls out what AMD's true quad-core sound architecture mid next year.
Posted in: Technology on Sunday, December 10, 2006 at