Dual-Core or Double Hype? - So Who Needs It?
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There isn’t often much need to have multiple specialized software or game titles open simultaneously. When you’re using Photoshop or Doom 3, how much else can you be doing at the same time anyway? Say you have five things to finish on the computer. Do you do them all at the same time? No, you’re only human, and trying to stretch your attention over all five is not as effective as working on one or two at a time. In other words, you probably aren’t going to open all the resource eating software at the same time, and you don’t need to be able to. Letting a compiler run while playing Counterstike might sound cool, but how often will you do it?
Of course, you could need several editing programs open at once because you may use them together. A combination of Photoshop and Dreamweaver won’t choke a normal CPU. If you get much more demanding than that, and you use the editing software often enough to actually make the extra investment worthwhile, you’re probably a design or programming specialist, if not professional, that might consider buying a dual processor system.
So the market for dual-core seems to overlap with the industries that are using dual processors. This is really where dual-cores stand to be popularized right now. However, the only advantages of a dual-core chip over the multiprocessor equivalent is that software that is licensed per-processor might be half as expensive (we'll see about this), and buying the hardware will also be somewhat less expensive since you are buying one chip instead of two. The dual processor systems have the upper hand in terms of performance, since their smaller single-core chips can be clocked higher and stay cooler.
AMD may turn this around when their release is ready, not making it necessary to sacrifice clock speeds. We'll have to see what performance on those chips looks like, but it still sounds like needless bells and whistles. Perhaps these Intel's chips are rushed to market and the real dual-cores will arrive months later. It's also possible that Intel is just trying to build hype over this so that software firms will expand support (so that Intel and AMD actually do have something to hype). But while professional designers and programmers rightfully drool over the potential, Intel is selling the rest of us a line about increased multitasking. As if there’s no time we aren’t using our computers, so we HAVE to run a virus scan at the same time as we crawl Doom’s corridors.
Realistically, there is no demand for this hardware in the consumer market, aside from those looking to impress people by putting their system specs in their forum signature. The market for this is for all purposes the same as that of dual processors; there are a select few it would be a serious advantage for, and even then it is only a cost advantage over multiple processors. Those who can use it probably already have dual processor systems or were considering them, and maybe those who keep their task bars so full of open programs they can’t read any of the titles.
Keep in mind, SMP software will probably become more standard to programs within the next several years, especially if Intel and AMD continue having difficulty breeching the 4GHz mark. This will make dual-cores more functional, but they still won't be viable for more than a year, or maybe more than two years. Is this new technology really a necessity, or are Intel and AMD hyping anything to obsolesce our current hardware? Is this just a glorified newer-is-better race, where some Dual Core-Revolution (coined by Intel) or Next Evolution in Computing (coined by AMD) convinces us that our current machine has kicked the bucket?
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