Dual-core processor

Dual core vs. Dual CPU: AMD and Intel's dual-core technologies also have a very different physical structure. AMD has two cores on a die (crystal), connected through a direct-attached structure, higher integration. Intel would encapsulate the two cores placed on different die (crystal), so someone called Intel's solution "dual core", thinking that AMD's solution was the real "dual-core". From the point of view of the client side, AMD's solution allows the dual-core CPU's PIN, power consumption and other indicators consistent with the single core CPU, from the single core upgrade to dual-core, do not need to replace the power supply, chipset, thermal system and motherboard, only need to refresh the BIOS software, which for the motherboard manufacturers, The investment protection of the computer manufacturer and the end user is very advantageous. Customers can use their existing 90 nm infrastructure to migrate to a dual-core system via BIOS changes.

Computer manufacturers can easily provide a single core and dual core version of the same hardware, enabling customers who want to improve performance and maintain the stability of the IT environment to upgrade to dual cores without disruption to the business. In a highly rack-dense environment, the customer's system performance will be greatly enhanced by porting to the dual core with the same power and infrastructure investment. In the same system footprint, customers will gain a higher level of computing power and performance through the use of dual core processors.

Dual-core processors (Dual core Processor): Dual-core processors are the integration of two computing cores on a single processor to improve computational power. The concept of "dual core" was first proposed by IBM, HP, Sun and other high-end server vendors supporting RISC architecture, but because of the high cost and narrow application of the RISC architecture, it did not attract wide attention.

The concept of "dual-core", which has recently become hot, mainly refers to dual-core technology based on X86 open architecture. In this regard, the leading manufacturers are mainly AMD and Intel two. Among them, the two ideas are different. AMD has been designing from the outset to take into account the support of multiple cores. All components are directly connected to the CPU, eliminating system architecture challenges and bottlenecks. The two processor cores are directly connected to the same kernel, and the core is communicated with the chip speed, further reducing the latency between the processors. Intel uses multiple cores to share the front-end bus. Experts believe that AMD's architecture for easier implementation of dual-core and multi-core, Intel's architecture will encounter a number of kernel contention bus resources bottleneck problem.

Currently Intel's desktop dual-core processor has Pentium D, Pentium EE (Pentium Extreme Edition) and core duo three types, the three working principles are very different.

One, Pentium D and Pentium EE

Pentium D and Pentium ee for the mainstream market and high-end markets, each with a stand-alone cache design, within the processor inside the two cores are isolated from each other through the processor external (motherboard North Bridge Chip) Arbitrator is responsible for the coordination of task assignment between the two cores and synchronization of cached data. Two cores share the front-end bus and rely on the front-end bus to transfer cache synchronization data between the two cores. Architecturally, this type is a loosely-coupled dual-core processor coupling scheme based on independent caching, with the advantage of being technically simple enough to encapsulate two identical processor cores on the same substrate; the disadvantage is that the data latency problem is more serious and the performance is not satisfactory. In addition, the biggest difference between Pentium D and Pentium ee is that Pentium EE supports Hyper-Threading technology and Pentium D does not, and Pentium EE is recognized by the operating system as four logical processors after the Hyper-threading technology is turned on.

AMD Dual-core processor

AMD's dual core processor is a dual core Opteron series and a new Athlon X2 series processor. One of the Athlon X2 is a dual-core desktop processor used to counter Pentium D and Pentium Extreme edition.

AMD's launch of the Athlon X2 is a Venice core combination of two Athlon 64 processors, each with a separate 512KB (1MB) L2 cache and execution unit. In addition to a core, there is no significant structural change from the architecture to the current Athlon 64.

The majority of the specifications and functions of the dual core Athlon X2 are no different from the familiar Athlon 64 architecture, which means that the new Athlon X2 dual core processors still support the 1GHZ specification HyperTransport bus, A DDR memory controller that supports dual channel settings is built in.

Unlike Intel's dual-core processors, the two cores of the Athlon X2 do not need to be coordinated with each other through the MCH. AMD provides a technology, called System request queue, within the Athlon X2 dual core processor, where each core requests its request in SRQ at work, and requests are sent to the appropriate execution core when the resource is obtained. This means that all processes are completed within the CPU core and do not require external devices.

For dual-core architectures, AMD's approach is to integrate two cores into the same silicon kernel, while Intel's dual-core approach is more like a simple one with two cores. AMD Dual-core processor systems do not have a transmission bottleneck between the two cores compared to Intel's dual core architecture. Therefore, in this respect, the structure of the Athlon X2 is significantly superior to the Pentium D framework.

While AMD does not have to worry about the power and heat of the Prescott core compared to Intel, it also needs to consider ways to reduce power for dual-core processors. To this end, AMD did not adopt the method of reducing the frequency, but in its 90nm process production of the Athlon X2 processor using the so-called dual Stress liner strain silicon technology, with SOI technology, to produce higher performance, lower power consumption of transistors.

The most affordable benefit of AMD's Athlon X2 processor is that the new dual-core processor is available without the need for a replacement platform, as long as the BIOS is upgraded to the old motherboard, which is compared to the Intel dual core processor must replace the new platform to support Upgrading a dual-core system can save a lot of money.