wtf triple core

[Killgannon]

http://www.amd.com/us-en/Processors/Pro ... 16,00.html

explain the reasoning behind a triple core... what happened to smp? you cant be symmetrical with an odd number!! (thus smp not working on single cores) i dont understand -.-;; I guess its just AMD eh>.>?

[diony]

If I'm not mistaken, AMD triple cores are actually quad-cores with one core disabled?

[Isiolia]

If I'm not mistaken, AMD triple cores are actually quad-cores with one core disabled?

Yes.

They use the quad cores where a core can't pass certification tests or whatnot for the triple cores.

Far as having only three...it doesn't need to be symmetrical like that. Modern OSes and many apps are multi-threaded. Those threads can be distributed between however many CPUs you have (which, effectively, is what each core is now).

[Zosi]

http://www.amd.com/us-en/Processors/ProductInformation/0,,30_118_15331_15332%5E15616,00.html

explain the reasoning behind a triple core... what happened to smp? you cant be symmetrical with an odd number!! (thus smp not working on single cores) i dont understand -.-;; I guess its just AMD eh>.>?

"Symmetric" in SMP doesn't refer to an even number of cores at all. It just means that you're using identical general-purpose processors rather than specialized processors for particular tasks, which is known as ASMP. There's no "even numbers only" or "powers of two only" restriction, that's simply the most efficient way to package the current designs. What AMD tri-core systems are are processors that were fabbed as quad-core, but have a faults in only one of the cores, or the interconnects leading to one of the cores. These processors would normally be thrown out, but they've been designed to function with a core missing, so you have a working tri-core system.

[mootsfox]

Every one of AMD's AM2 socket quads are native quad cores, meaning they have one die. Most of Intel's quads are actually two dual core dies put on the same chip.

Now, there is no 100% yield with CPUs, on a wafer where the dies are made, some will not work, some will work better than others. For Intel, the shitty dies are thrown out if they don't work at all, or marked as Celery. The higher clocking dies will be put in Extreme Edition chips and higher end chips.

For AMD, if one of the cores on a quad core chip is dead, that's a lot of wasted money (think $30-40 per die) to throw away. If you get 10 of those on each wafer of 100, that's eating up most of your profit right there. So they can disable one core and instead sell it at a slightly reduced cost to recoup some of the lost money.

They are not trying to produce tricores, they are trying to reduce losses by selling borked quads.

[Killgannon]

thank god im not an AMD fan boy anymore>.>;

HEY YEA LETS SELL SHIT THAT MIGHT EXPLODE SINCE IT ALREADY FAILED PART OF ITS ASSEMBLY PROCESS!!

[Zosi]

thank god im not an AMD fan boy anymore>.>;

HEY YEA LETS SELL SHIT THAT MIGHT EXPLODE SINCE IT ALREADY FAILED PART OF ITS ASSEMBLY PROCESS!!

You're an idiot. Stop making stupid assumptions about things you know nothing about, it just keeps getting you in trouble here. When chips are fabbed, errors happen. Full stop. A certain percentage of the units (read: cores) made don't work properly because of slight imperfections in the process. This is natural, it happens with any fabbing, because the materials aren't atom-identical, and it's impossible to keep a clean room 100.00000000000% clean. However, the cores on a die that aren't damaged work PERFECTLY FINE. They aren't damaged at all, they're tested to make sure that they work as designed, and they have no higher failure rate than dies with four functional cores. They aren't "weak" or "badly made", they just happen to have a neighbor that didn't make it through, and the only way to get the three good cores packaged is to bring along Mr. Dead Core.

It's no different than what every chipmaker does with on-die cache. They fab it for a certain quantity of cache, and if some units fail, they disable them (and any other features needed to match to a lower model) and sell it as their value line. Intel's famous for doing it with Celerons, I'm sure AMD does it with Durons as well. Hell, it's not that different from binning based on clock speed either. Is your CPU more likely to "EXPLODE" running at 3ghz because it didn't pass QC at 3.5ghz? Not really, it just won't be as overclockable relative to it's spec'd speed.

[mootsfox]

thank god im not an AMD fan boy anymore>.>;

HEY YEA LETS SELL SHIT THAT MIGHT EXPLODE SINCE IT ALREADY FAILED PART OF ITS ASSEMBLY PROCESS!!

You're an idiot. Stop making stupid assumptions about things you know nothing about, it just keeps getting you in trouble here. When chips are fabbed, errors happen. Full stop. A certain percentage of the units (read: cores) made don't work properly because of slight imperfections in the process. This is natural, it happens with any fabbing, because the materials aren't atom-identical, and it's impossible to keep a clean room 100.00000000000% clean. However, the cores on a die that aren't damaged work PERFECTLY FINE. They aren't damaged at all, they're tested to make sure that they work as designed, and they have no higher failure rate than dies with four functional cores. They aren't "weak" or "badly made", they just happen to have a neighbor that didn't make it through, and the only way to get the three good cores packaged is to bring along Mr. Dead Core.

It's no different than what every chipmaker does with on-die cache. They fab it for a certain quantity of cache, and if some units fail, they disable them (and any other features needed to match to a lower model) and sell it as their value line. Intel's famous for doing it with Celerons, I'm sure AMD does it with Durons as well. Hell, it's not that different from binning based on clock speed either. Is your CPU more likely to "EXPLODE" running at 3ghz because it didn't pass QC at 3.5ghz? Not really, it just won't be as overclockable relative to it's spec'd speed.

Thank you.

Killgannon, keep the stupidity in spam.