Intel Core X-Series CPUs Announced, Up To 18 Cores

[ldo17]

I remember drooling over such ads in PC-Magazine back in the 80's.

I found them depressing. I was an Apple Mac man back in the day, and the overwhelming tide of “PC-compatible” mediocrity that washed over everything was almost too much to bear.

For me, it was Linux that made x86 worth using.

[gilboa]

I found them depressing. I was an Apple Mac man back in the day, and the overwhelming tide of “PC-compatible” mediocrity that washed over everything was almost too much to bear.

For me, it was Linux that made x86 worth using.

Actually, the huge diversity in the PC world, especially back in the 80s and 90s made it all worth while.
Today most of the interesting bits are stuffed inside the CPU and the GPU. Everything else is just glue.

Back then, you had 100 different manufacturers, each trying to innovate in its own unique way.
CPUs, FPUs, memory, chipsets, cache, slots, case-structure, graphics cards, you name it.

Plus, the performance difference between different configurations was staggering.
E.g. When I jumped from C64 to a 10Mhz XT or from a 10Mhz XT to a 16Mhz 386.

- Gilboa

[nils_]

The HCC Xeon (that will most likely be used in the 18 core i9), uses NUMA topology.
Intel doesn't do 18-core-in-a-single block. Not even close.

E.g. http://images.anandtech.com/doci/101...24coresHCC.png

- Gilboa

This is still a single die though, so the interconnect is a lot faster and it'll present to the OS as a single NUMA node.

[gilboa]

This is still a single die though, so the interconnect is a lot faster and it'll present to the OS as a single NUMA node.

I'm not sure you *must* have performance penalty when doing two dies in a single CPU vs. two blocks in a single die.
It all depends on the implementation.

- Gilboa