by Anton Shilov
09/12/2007 | 03:46 PM
Even though both Advanced Micro Devices and Intel Corp. have been denying possibility of the so-called “core wars” akin to “MHz wars” years ago, it seems that both companies will be involved in such wars, as customers these days show the demand towards more processing engines pretty clearly.
<%BANNER[article]%>A recent poll at X-bit labs showed that about 59% of respondents would choose a quad-core processor, whereas only 41% would prefer a high-speed dual-core central processing unit. The results show that after two years of the “multi-core era” end-users start to gain confidence that performance increases along with the number of cores. The popularity of multi-core processors will allow both AMD and Intel to sell more of their innovative quad-core chips.
But rather rapid acceptance of quad-core processors by computer users may not only force chipmakers to produce more products that are more expensive to produce, but may also eventually lead to a “core war”, when the two leading producers of central processing units (CPUs) concentrate on increasing the amount of cores on their chips at any cost.
Both AMD and Intel are interested in popularizing their latest processors and preparing the market for future chips. But at some point both makers of CPUs may find themselves in positions when they cannot increase the amount of processing engines, like they faced the limit of clock-speeds for then existing process technologies.
X-bit labs polled over 3.5 thousand of its readers in August, 2007.