News AMD developing reverse hyperthreading?

Brilliant idea, as long as its disableable in the BIOS like HT, for when more dual threaded apps come out, surely a winner, be like having a dualie, but not

 

What about games? have you every played 8 slow games before at the same time? 1 fast game would be much more senseble. But i guess 8 other type programs would have advantages over single core prosessors.

 

It's a great idea, provided it works well. I'm assuming stuff is being rewritten for multi-core and not just dual-core (so it could scale to quad-, oct?- and beyond core chips), but in the meantime, that would be great. Finally you could explain to people that two 2.5GHz cores would be the same as a single 5GHz. For the simplicity of explanation alone, the tech is worth it.

Of course, it's a shame that we need to have AMD doing coders' jobs, but progress is progress. In reality, Windows should be doing this, but their thread management support is below abysmal right now.

 

i think most software is gonna stick to dual if being re-written at all. it will only be the server markets that will get anything out of more threaded apps. some video compression uses multi-threads but the performance is pretty good.

for the cost outlay to re-write it again it wouldn't be worth it, esp seeing as u would bottleneck with the hard drive. games are the only ones likely to go further threaded, but what u gonna have, a thread for the bullets, a thread for shrapnel etc etc there's only so many threads u can have, and with aegia taking the physics there is even less

quad core should be the logical end point for desktops, NO-ONE needs more than that!!

 

What about this, the quad core processor is used as a single core system unless the OS, app or game requires more tasks... Sounds logic to me... Vista will be using 64 bit anyway so I wouldn't worry about the quad system using 1/8th of it's power. It's the least of your worries...

@ Spacecowboy92:

Er... What about playing 1 game and having the 8 tasks calculate the OS, physics, scripts, a bit of the graphics maybe?, AI and maybe a gigantic world twice the size of Oblivion's Cyrodiil... That would make a lot more sense. 8 different tasks doesn't mean 8 different games or apps. It means 1 game or 1 app can have 8 different tsks done at the same time which simply means that it runs 8 times faster.

 

and how many times have we been told that in the history of computers then...

the idea sounds simple enough. if a single threaded app can benefit from having 2 or more cores work on it at a hardware level and its easy enough to turn on / off then why not. we wont know till bit-tech get there hands on it and review anyway which im sure there dreaming of the thought of right now.

 

I don't quite get what 64bit instructions have to do with it, but, hmm, ok

And thanks for repeating what I have said...

 

Interesting Idea

1) Programs can only really make use of a certain number of threads

2) It gives a big speed boost to current games

3) In the future - if we have 50 cores - you could emulate them down to 10 for eg
how many programs could be using 50 threads ? alot more use for 10 high speed threads

Few things have massivly parralel architectures in mind - weather forcasting and such does - hence super computers

but home users dont need as many threads

 

uh... what happens when developers develop DUAL threaded applications?

Then this feature will be useless... and since Intel is all about dual threaded, I'm betting so will the software industry along with microsoft.

Intel pushes for BTX... and there are BTX cases, Intel pushes for DDR2, DDR2 arises, When AMD pushed for 64-bit... it didn't really catch on until Intel jumped on board... and even then, no REAL support... where is Windowx XP 64-bit now (not beta)... where is vista now? 64-bit in my opinion is just a waste.... just like this reverse hyper threading...

Soon, when Intel works closely with Microsoft and VIIV, they're going to pressure microsoft into going dual threaded everything, and when software companies catches wind of this, they'll want support on dual threaded windows too.. so they'll start dual threading applications.

So basically, this technology would be good if they had it NOW, when not so many applications are dual threaded, but when games are dual threaded... then this is completely useless...


Oh yea, this WILL NOT offer 50% + increase in performance... nothing really does... look at crossfire, or SLi, it never offers 50% boost, sometimes none at all. Look at RAID 0, do you think it really doubles speed? Further, it will take processinc power to emulate, just like how SLi needs processing power to split the images, therefore, it will NOT double performance.

When this happens for AMD, they will offer the same perofrmance on games [single threaded] as they will for Intel's dual threaded games. but say, suddenly norton comes up, which one would you rather have?

The future is in going dual and multiple applications at the same time and I rather have smooth silky transitions from one application to another...

1. see 3.

2. but is this anti-hyperthreading technology out NOW to give speed boost to games NOW? And what do you think will happen when Intel puts some fancy propaganda/logo out saying all games approved for dual threading will have this logo? is AMD going to try to convice people 1 thread is better then 2?... just like what microsoft is doing with it's "Vista compatibe" computers.

3. If there are 50 cores, it'll be inefficent to emulate all 50, as it'll require much more processing power to emulate 50 cores then just 2. Instead, they'll probably develop software which can emulate threads... as in, this software, after detecting I have 50 cores, they will create 50 threads to run on 50 cores... much better the orchestrating 50 cores to run 1 thread.

 

Clearly none of you even have a clue what the heck this would do. Its not like any processor that has it immedietly turns its multiple cores into one emulated core that you cant turn off. Its purpose is, as I understand it, to exploit the unused processing resources WHEN THEY ARE NOT IN USE to provide a boost in single threaded applications rather than let the second (or more) cores go to waste.

Now that things are in proper context, you think this is such a waste?

 

I think this sounds pretty interesting, pretty diverse.

 

http://discuss.futuremark.com/forum/showflat.pl?Board=techmobocpu&Number=6060643

I think this is where the french get's translated...

And there's nothing there that supports what you're saying [rotosequence].... and besides... this is all rumors...

Bye Bye

 

And there is even less to support "Then this feature will be useless... and since Intel is all about dual threaded, I'm betting so will the software industry along with microsoft."

Wow, thats great in the long term. What about the 99.999999% of applications that are single threaded in use by 99.999% of the computing populace?

If the future is going to be multicored, you might as well get as much bang for your buck as possible - and this is a great way to do it whilst still diversifying the multi-core platform.

While it is still rumours, think before you post; your argument doesnt hold water.

 

Um... are you saying that games are not going multi threaded, more then a few games are and going to be dual threaded with patches.... what about running 2 single threads at the same time for 2 cores? and how will single virtual core help me in running 4 applications at the same time? thought about that?

besides, my pervious post was only to counterclaim you on

which it clearly doesnt....based on the rumor

Perhaps you should follow your own advice and think before you post; your argument doesnt hold water.

 

Look. N/A (Not Adult?) Nobody knows what exactly this will do, so currently it is all speculation. Just chill out.

 

No, I'm saying that applications which arent multithreaded will get a speed benefit. A few games are going to be dual thread. Or more. But what about applications that arent? This isnt software theyre developing, its hardware. Two single threads running on two cores will run fine. What about two single threads on four cores? Oh look thats two cores going to waste. Shame. Too bad you didnt get that AMD anti-hyperthreading, otherwise they would be doing something useful.

 

What does my display name have to do with any of this? wow... shadow fury... what does that mean? you're too scared to express your fury so you hide it? be mature... and any signs that I'm not chilled out?

Why are you saying this? I did not refute this. But you still have to be aware, the switching and emulating takes processing power.... what happens when you get more cores? less efficent.

Did I say anything to suggest otherwise?

I'm talking about the PRESENT. if you look at my earlier posts, I said this is useful NOW as there are tons of single threaded applications, but in the future what happens if applications are dual threaded?

Then you can have 1 dual threaded application run on 2 cores, and another dual threaded application run on the other 2 cores of the quad core.

or split 1 threaded application into 4 threads....

opps you didn't waste anything.

Bye Bye

 

More or less. Well done.

We've not seen evidence of this yet, a 1.8 venice matches an 1.8 X2 in single core bits.

This is where you kick yourself, since when does ONE program run 100% useage on two cores?
Anyway, ignoring the fact that this in your opinion could be a bad move, why so? Surely its better to implement something like this, its more efficent and makes sense!

 

Honestly, even with multi threaded applications, at quad cores or more, those cores are still going to be doing almost nothing, and its going to remain that way for years to come.

How many applications can a human being operate at any one time?

Unless you have two mice and remarkable visual tasking ability (physically impossible for the human brain), the answer is one. This means that at any one time, a user will only be using one application. To utilize a second core to its full potential, you have to start using background applications. Antivirus? Thats one. Burning a DVD? Thats two. Rendering a movie? Thats three (but shouldnt that be done BEFORE you burn a DVD?). How many more applications are there that you'll want to run that one of the cores on that quad core processor cant handle? Honestly, there arent very many. Maybe a multithreaded game, but as things stand this kind of operating environment is an extreme case (and your attention will be wholly within something else anyway!).

With even more cores, its almost impossible to utilize them in the desktop space properly. This is where this kind of thing would REALLY become useful, as Intel tries to drive the industry in the direction of dozens of cores per processor.

Now, what about the server space? A multi-processor environment, where specialized processing occurs using off the shelf software, servers could get a nice speed boost from a second, lower speed, and inevitably less expensive, processor that is providing additional application throughput.

This "anti hyperthreading" isnt just going to be useful "now" before it comes out, it will be useful in the future too. You can only make so many things multithreaded before its just mindless bloat. No programming language exists to properly take advantage of dual cores (proper meaning to make the task get done more efficiently and faster), so you might as well improve performance where it really matters - in the individual applications that end users are currently running.

 

Very fun read, indeed

Okay. I have been reading many silly threads in the past just for the fun of it. This one is no better than the rest. Discussing a rumour written by a French journalist and translated using the ridicoulously crappy Google translator service is a big waste of time. Wait for the official ENGLISH press-release from AMD before judging any of this.

I resent having Multiple cores on ordinary desktop computers as dual core technology was invented for the server market to handle more connections and offload database processing. Dual core technology is also used by professionals in video and graphics processing to shorten rendering time.
Even though gamers want to be associated with professionalism they never will be pro computer users like that. They only want their games to look amazing and feel more real. And you don't need multiple cores for that, only better graphics accelerator cards. AEGIS is even working on physics processors to help improve the realism. And that isn't a second core, that is a specialised processor for physics calculations with it's own instruction set.

I currently use an AMD Opteron 150 single core CPU and I am pretty happy with it. I'm not into video editing or professional graphics (like Autocad, Maya and 3DStudio, NOT GAMES) so single core suits me just fine.
If I want to do stuff like that I buy a separate computer with a 3DLabs graphics card (or nVidia Quadro series) and a Dual Core (or Quad Core CPU) or maybe a Two-way motherboard. Don't try to make a single computer do everything for you. It has never worked before and will neither work in the future (feel free to challenge me on that).

Let's not complicate things unneccessarily.