|
Advice Beginners BIOS Guide CPUs Links Mainboards Memory Network Storage Video/Sound Cards Contact Forum SiteMap Sponsors WebNews Home 
|
. | . |
Prices: Mainboards ABIT ASUS Chaintech Shuttle Soyo Tyan CPU Intel P4 2.4C-800 P4 2.6C-800 P4 2.8C-800 P4 3.0-800 P4 3.2-800 AMD AthlonXP XP 1700+ XP 2000+ XP 2400+ XP 2500+ XP 2700+ XP 3000+ XP 3200+ Athlon64 Athlon64 3200+ Athlon64 FX-51 Opteron Opteron 240 Opteron 242 Opteron 244 Opteron 246 Memory Corsair Crucial Kingston Mushkin OCZ |
LOSTCIRCUITS
|
|
| Intel Core 2 Duo Blinded by the light | |
|
(Review by MS, July 25, 2006) |
The Shared Cache
From an architectural standpoint, the major factor holding back Intel’s performance was the data interface in the broadest sense. The processor side bus interfacing the CPU with the core logic appears very ineffective for anything but streaming applications, and particularly in an SMP situation (including dual core CPUs), the broad issue of the cache coherency is essentially a death-blow to any reasonable approach to further speeding up the processor. Briefly, because the caches were not shared, every piece of data, in order to be flipped back and forth between the cores had to be moved out to the main memory and from there, it had to be re-imported through the same bi-directional interface to the other half of the CPU. This takes a lot of time.
The solution is a complete change of the caching strategy, meaning that the cache of both CPUs is shared between them. Especially in the case of a bi-directional outside connection where data can only go one way at any given point in time, the cache sharing translates into a huge performance increase – at least on paper.
Shared vs. Independent L2 Cache
Having fast access to data is one thing but there is also the issue of executing the instructions better and faster. This is where the second improvement in the Core2 architecture takes place: the Intel Wide Dynamic Execution allows simultaneous execution of up to four full instructions simultaneously per core.
Intel Wide Dynamic Execution
|
Intel Core Duo T2600 (dual core) |
next page: => Numbers and Test Configuration =>
All advice and educational articles on LostCircuits are free, but if you feel you can, please make a small donation to us!