Intel answers prayer...
 

Intel has unveiled a new chip that has had me fantasizing nightly since I read about it.

Seriously, aside from the obvious expense, could you IMAGINE a machine running 96 processing cores, with that much speed, power, and cache? What on this planet could lag a computer with that kind of hardware put into it?

I won't be able to afford a system that advanced for quite a while, but it's nice to dream! Intel brings out yet one more reason to stay a fanboy for their chips!

And you know they're only going to keep getting better. It might be a bit overkill right now, but I'd love to get my hands on it.

...Good god...

You do realize that that's for server use, right? As in it's meant to handle incredible loads from large numbers of users at once? Something like that is completely impractical for any gaming technology I can currently fathom outside of MMO-type applications, which use servers anyway. Until we get AI on par with the full capacity of the human brain, I really don't see this being anywhere near necessary for a single application.

That is indeed quite ridiculous, and I think that it illustrates where computers are going. While 6 cores in one processor is overkill outside of the server market now, it shows what will eventually filter down to mainstream computers. The direction that processors are going currently is multi-core, clock speed isn't a huge selling point anymore, because anything that you buy is going to have at least 2 ghz, which for a PC is plenty.

Who knows, maybe 10 years in the future clock speed won't be mentioned at all, it'll just be sort of a foot note, like the voltage requirement on case fan or something, instead it may be advertising 6 Kc (killi-core).

More cores is the logical way to go. We run maybe 5 applications at a time on top of the OS and one core can't juggle all of that without any bottlenecks. With more cores, say 6, as in these new processors from intel, you could divide up the labor between them.

Yes. And I do run servers for my friends, when they get the urge to play something privately. Regardless, I'd just love to get ahold of those chips to see what all I could do with them.

Ah. That makes more sense then.

Thinking of it this way, if we're designating cores for different functions (like the PS2's dual-chip setup), 6 cores could be:

1. Graphics
2. Sound
3-6. as needed for general processing, specific tasks, AI, or to (Heaven help us) pick up slack from 1 and 2.

Seriously, though, that in itself is overkill. Until we get advanced AI, there will be no reason any home application would require that much power for a single-user program. Unless it's Crysis. XD

I'm interested in the potential of what could be done with this sort of tech as it applies to gaming servers.

Youve basically just described a current quad-core setup.

One GPU for video
A sound Card with its own processor
And 4 cores for whatever a CPU needs to do.

Sure they arent all in the same chip, but still. And besides, a specialized core, such as the GPU used in a Video Card, will always do its task better than a CPU, no matter how badass it looks.

Honestly. I'm not sure where I was going with that.

Actually if we're talking really high end gaming the set up is more like this:

2 Nvidia video cards running dual GPUs and 1 Gig of ram each hooked together via SLI. That's 4 cores working on your graphics.

That's paired with a Quad core CPU and probably 16 Gigs of RAM assuming a 64-bit operating system.

And then a totally superfluous sound card with its own CPU.

In short, really hard core gamers with to much money have been using 8 processors for a little while. I've actually got 6 right now, a quad-core cpu and two Geforce 8800 GTs.

Really though parallel processing as always been the direction that computing was headed in. Its simply the best way to do information processing. One of the reasons are brains are so powerful is that we process in parallel. Eventually we'll get to the point where every bit on the chip is connected in parallel with every other bit via quantum effects and then we'll really be in trouble AI-wise.

Well, the sound card isnt totally unneccessary. Its takes computing load away from your CPU, RAM and Chipset; and often delivers better quality sound.

You can also throw in the Physics card that are hanging around, or even a Killer Networking card. Maybe even count the Chipset that somehow manages all that crap.



Me? Still running a single core 64-bit processor and a single core video card, and a dated motherboard that (at the time) had all the frills, so it managed all sorts of fun add-ons.