How Slow for a 80-Core CPU?

Trying to get attention back from AMD, Intel says it hopes to ship a 80-core CPU by 2010. Could be exciting, if software programmers figure out how to deal with 80 threads.

A computer that runs 80x faster! Actually, no.

In introducing the soon-to-ship 4-core CPU, Intel admitted it is only 70% faster than a 2-core CPU. I should probably look it up, but it seems to me that the 2-core is 80-90% faster than single core.

Extrapolate that downward-sloping efficiency curve to 80 cores. Add in the 80x power consumption, the 80x heat generation, and the inability of desktop software to take advantage of 80 CPU-equivalents...

This turns into a very unsexy announcement.

Comments

[Billmce]

Ralph, you need get up on things a bit. The reason for the drop in the performance is because they gain non-linearly on the power consumption and heat generation. That is why the push to multi core is on. You get way more performance for way less increases in power consumption and heat generation than the clock speed route.....