There is a serious amount of discussion in the software developer trade rags
about programming for multi-core systems. Intel, of course, is leading the way
by making multi-core software development tools available, most notably C
compilers and supporting stuff.

Bottom line is that today, October 11, 2008, an application that makes true use
of mulitple cores and threads is probably very rare. However, that does not
invalidate the multi-core approach to provide more computing power with a
smaller electrical power budget. After all, Windows, Linux, and BSD Unix (for
the Mac OS X crowd) all run multiple threads and concurrent applications which
can be dispatched to idle or low use CPUs.

What I have not seen in all the multi-core discussion are the effects of memory
bus and memory bandwidth on making effective use of all them cores. Way back
when I worked with Honeywell's monster multicore mastodon mainframes, CPU
utilization percentages dropped off with each added processor. Honeywell had a
standard quad processor offering, and GE San Jose asked for and got special 5-
and 6-processor systems for their nuclear power plant computations. Of course,
back then in the '70's, a CPU took up an entire cabinet the size of a commercial
refrigerator (which is how they looked). Possibly circuit paths a couple of
inches long have reduced contention for memory access by multi-core CPUs. I
would still like to see someone's heavily instrumented analysis, but I suspect
that Intel keeps that info closely under wraps. Same with AMD... Ben Myers

On Fri, 10 Oct 2008 23:02:09 -0500, "S.Lewis" wrote:

SNIP

As you're configuring the system, just get the most capable CPU you can get
within your sense of value. You'll notice the price premium differences
when putting the system together.

It's not as if there is a huge wealth of applications coded to fully utilize
multi-core processors (someone please correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't
think so).

Additionally, I know of no (mainstream) software written to take advantage
of hyperthreading.

So, no. You're not being silly imo.


Stew