Mixed Signals
Any sufficiently advanced information is indistinguishable from noise
Tuesday 14 November 2006, 9:24 AM
Quad Core at the Particle of the Month Club
If this is Tuesday, it must be Switzerland. More specifically, I'm at CERN where Intel wants to tell a large gaggle of Emeahacks about quad-core processing. I'm really here for the high energy physics, but don't tell anyone - and if there's a chance to pay homage at the black cube which was the ur-Web server, I'll take that too. Not sure whether I should walk around it clockwise.
First things first - how much speed do you get from a wireless network within CERN, one of the most hyperconnected spots on the planet? 5Mbps down, 2.5Mbps up. They're going to need more than that when the Large Hadron Collider produces its gigabyte a second experimental results for its ten years or so of planned operation.
I would blog what we're being told at the moment, but it's an Intel bloke in an expensive tie talking about Moore's Law. Erm, let's see increasing clock speed, incraesed power consumption out of proportion to increased processor throughput, so keep frequency down and increase parallelism.
You know the score.
Oh, processors?
Intel Core 2 Extreme Quad-Core and
Intel Xeon 5300.
The Extreme is for 'multimedia enthusiasts of multicore' and the Xeon is for 'completely new levels of power/performance'. Much check that against Monty's Seat-Oh.
Ah, we're onto the megaserver, Intel's latest bete noir. A million servers take the same power as 278,000 homes, and 18 football field'sworth of room. Since we're back on the standard Intel Powerpoint, I think I'll spare you the rest. Back when something chewy happens.
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