AMD demos four-core tech, talks ATI acquisition

SUNNYVALE, Calif.--Fresh from its ATI acquisition announcement, processor manufacturer Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) today demonstrated a working four-core desktop system at a technology event held at its company headquarters. The four-core test system used two dual-core 2.8GHz CPU engineering samples, clocked at the same speed as AMD's flagship Athlon 64 FX-62 dual-core processor.

The four-core system outperformed a dual-core Athlon 64 FX-62 comparison system in several multithreaded, processor-intensive applications ranging from 3D rendering to video transcoding. AMD didn't reveal benchmark scores at Microsoft's request because the systems were running on Windows Vista software, which is still in beta. However, AMD representatives were able to show the performance differences by running the systems side by side in race scenarios. Not surprisingly, the four-core system finished ahead of the dual-core comparison system, often by a huge time margin.

During the demonstration, Pat Moorhead, AMD's vice president of advanced marketing, took special care to explain that multicore PCs won't necessarily run all applications faster than single-core systems. Instead, he said, multiple cores will help the most in what AMD calls "megatasking" scenarios, which involve running several processor-intensive applications at the same time, such as playing a game while transcoding a video in the background.

Speed and power characterized the last two decades of desktop processors, but parallelism has become the new mantra for manufacturers, because heat and production challenges make it more difficult to increase processor speeds. If a CPU-maker can't increase single-core performance through clock speeds, the next best option is to add additional cores that work in tandem.

Multicore CPUs, once the domain of servers and high-performance workstations, have gone mainstream over the past year. AMD's Athlon 64 X2 and Intel's Pentium D, the first dual-core processors from both major manufacturers, have gained a solid foothold in consumer desktops. Both companies are now preparing to push parallelism even further by adding four or more processing cores into each system.

AMD presented today's four-core system demo as a preview of the 4x4 "Quad-father" enthusiast multiprocessor platform announced earlier this summer. The first "4" in 4x4 represents the four processing cores present in a two-socket system populated with two dual-core processors. Many assumed that the second "4" referred to quad GPUs when AMD first made the 4x4 announcement, but Moorhead clarified today that the second four represents any kind of high-performance hardware, anything from four hard disks to four GPUs or even 4GBs of system memory.

The four-core prototype system itself didn't have the complete 4x4 feature set enabled, which is why AMD was careful to label the demo as a four-core demo, not a 4x4 demo. The four-core system had two engineering samples featuring the same cache amount and clocked at the same speed as the Athlon 64 FX-62, but the motherboard used buffered memory instead of the unbuffered memory that shipping 4x4 systems will support.

Moorhead announced that the 4x4 platform will be upgradable to eight cores once AMD releases quad-core processors in 2007. Consumers who pick up a 4x4 system this holiday season will be able to upgrade from dual-core CPUs up to quad-core CPUs without purchasing a new motherboard.

Rahul Sood, founder and CTO of high-end system manufacturer VoodooPC, contends that AMD's multiprocessor platform is particularly well suited to gamers because each CPU has its own dedicated memory. Serious game players have long avoided multitasking for fear of decreasing game performance, but the new platform will allow gamers to run applications without affecting gameplay. "The hardcore gamers are all about the bare minimum--they don't want garbage running," said Sood.

AMD also addressed questions regarding its recent acquisition of Canadian graphics manufacturer ATI. Moorhead reiterated AMD's stance that ATI was an "acquisition of growth" and that the "goal is to build a processing powerhouse" where AMD provides the CPU muscle in the server and PC space while ATI offers graphics chipsets for PCs, GPUs for consumer electronics like the Xbox 360 and Wii, and processors for digital televisions and handsets.

When asked if AMD planned to change its Turion mobile CPU branding to include an ATI chipset requirement, Moorhead took a swipe at Intel's mobile strategy. "No, we won't force our customers to buy a chipset for the privilege of using the branding," he said.

Moorhead declined to comment on how the deal may affect ATI's license to produce chipsets for Intel-based platforms, but he did point out that the company's estimates have been very conservative. "We've zeroed out all that Intel business," said Moorhead.