DUAL CORE PROCESSORS

AMD wins over INTEL...

What is a DUAL CORE? It's like a processor that has two processors in a single package. Our processors are all single-cores and the things to be accounted to increase the performance of the processors is by increasing the instructions per clock cycle (IPC) and to increase clock speed. Both go hand-in-hand. Now, dual core processors; can have almost twice the performance of a single core.

Intel's Pentium D, Xeon and Pentium Extreme Edition (XE) are their latest dual core technology processors. But, Intel engineers confirmed that their Pentium D is really two Pentium 4 processor cores in same package. It was a rush job! Intel claimed it had to quickly create a dual-core processor in order to remain competitive.Technically, its single-core Pentium 4 uses Prescott core and dual-core Pentium D uses Smithfield core which is simply a combined two Prescott core. There's no added technology here. Just a combination of two cores. Another thing is, this processor can't be used unless your software is capable to be run in a dual-core. Dismayed huh!

AMD's Athlon 64 X2, Opteron are AMD's entry for dul-core processors. They really did a great job for this! Like Intel Pentium D, Athlon 64 X2 is a combination of two Athlon 64. Athlon 64 X2 core is based on either the Toledo or Manchester cores, with the difference being with the size of the L2 cache memory. Unlike Pentium D, in the Athlon 64 X2 are all connected via a system request queue and a crossbar switch, allowing full processor speed communication over that interface. Nice!!! Another good news, it can run whether your software is capable of dual-core or not. AMD wins this game!!!

You may visit Intel.com and AMD.com for more technical reviews.