Talk:Multi-core processor

message: Could we perhaps make some new entries listing applications that can run on different amounts of cores? Example: list all modern apps that can run on 4 cores... list apps that can utilize 8 cores... etc. Jacobhaines (talk) 20:21, 4 November 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: After reading  Bulldozer, I don't see anything wrong with it. It is usual on a multicore system to share some things, the big question is how fast it can run different work loads.  As with clock speeds, don't compare processors on core count alone. Gah4 (talk) 21:41, 14 August 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  Dual Core, Quad Core, Eight Core, etc. 

message: They are I/O intensive and as such, do not benefit from a multicore CPU.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 77.70.95.214 (talk) 19:32, 8 February 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Antivirus could use significant CPU time, though most minimize it using appropriate algorithms, such as hashing. Even so, they might fill up the L1 cache, and so there could be some benefit.  Yes, defragmenting should be mostly I/O. Gah4 (talk) 21:43, 14 August 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  Defragmenting and antivirus are not CPU intensive operations 

message: From the "Advantages" section:
The largest boost in performance will likely be noticed in improved response time while running CPU-intensive processes, like antivirus scans, ripping/burning media (requiring file conversion), or searching for folders.
Aren't anti-virus scans and searching for folders usually IO-bound not processor-bound? Perhaps audio & video processing and 3D rendering would be better examples. Burning media would be IO-bound too, so the conversion stage of ripping media is the only CPU-bound example left (and it counts as "audio & video processing"). —tedp (talk) 21:35, 5 June 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Advantages: CPU-bound, IO-bound, Memory bound 

message: Intel's approach (2 dies in a package) is mentioned.
AMD's approach to yield problems, by binning and converting quadcores with a single failed core to triple cores could be mentioned.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 81.6.232.208 (talk) 09:52, 6 January 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: Could be, but it seems to me more of an engineering detail. How many cores I get, how much power they use, and how much they cost I care about. How they get them into the chip, I don't. Gah4 (talk) 21:46, 14 August 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  Disadvantages: yield issues 

message: This may be a non-issue, but it seems that multicore is becoming the more popular spelling for multi-core/CMP machines. 68.34.101.214 (talk) 15:01, 22 March 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Multi-core versus Multicore 

message: Given that this is supposed to be an encyclopedia for non-initiates to find info on various topics, is possible to keep the jargon to a minimum? I was interested in knowing precisely what dual core processors were, but I found little that was comprehensible on this particular page.  A one-paragraph, jargon-free definition could perhaps be added at the top of this article.  Thanks! Episteme1972
—Preceding unsigned comment added by Episteme1972 (talk • contribs) 17:54, April 3, 2008
I agree ... The author isn't really trying to communicate - it is all just posing.  Using 'utilizing' sic)for plain 'using' gives it away, and they don't even mean the same thing.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 77.96.59.93 (talk) 21:20, 24 April 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  Jargon and encyclopedias 

message: You mention the xbox, doesn't the ps3 have more?
:It does. Xenon has 3 cores, Cell have 9. -- Henriok (talk) 13:19, 18 June 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: The Cell has 9 cores, and even though it is atypical, it's still 9 cores. Even if the Cell in PS3 have one disabled in manufacturing and one out of bounds for homebew, it's still 9 cores. The eight SPEs have their own pipeline, local memory, registers and ISA. They are cores and because it's atypical it'd be a nice example here. -- Henriok (talk) 21:16, 21 August 2008 (UTC)

text: The Cell has nine cores, eight SPEs and one PPE. -- Henriok (talk) 23:17, 18 October 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  ps3? 

message: Of note, this article references both the chief engineer at AMD named Chuck Moore, and the designer of the Forth language and the Intellasys SEAforth multicore chip, Chuck Moore.  The EE Times discussion section of this article incorrectly links to the latter on Wikipedia when it's about the former.
--64.58.22.201 (talk) 20:24, 27 March 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: Oops, my mistake. I didn't realize there was more than one CPU designer with that name. Now that I'm looking, I see lots of them -- including  Chuck, Charles,  Gordon, and  Calvin. --68.0.124.33 (talk) 02:29, 6 April 2009 (UTC)
replies: text:  Fixed - I removed the link. Guy Harris (talk) 08:36, 19 February 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Multiple "Chuck Moore"s  (Forth vs AMD) 

message: the page isn't objective and isn't platform neutral, and it gives almost no technical insight besides being a advertisement for users how great multi-core is, and then pointing out negatives which aren't actually negative for multi-core systems. Markthemac (talk) 20:35, 14 July 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Could you point out what is exactly wrong with the article? Specific paragraphs, sentences, statements, that sort of thing? Rilak (talk) 07:39, 15 July 2008 (UTC)
replies: text:  for example the American PC game developer Valve Corporation has stated that it will use multi core optimizations for the next version of its Source engine, shipped with Half-Life 2: Episode Two, the next installment of its Half-Life series.[2][3], and Crytek is developing similar technologies for CryEngine 2, which powers their game, Crysis. Emergent Game Technologies' Gamebryo engine includes their Floodgate technology[4] which simplifies multicore development across game platforms. See Dynamic Acceleration Technology for the Santa Rosa platform for an example of a technique to improve single-thread performance on dual-core processors. Markthemac (talk) 18:07, 20 July 2008 (UTC)

text: Out of the entire article, I only found one paragraph, the one you quoted, that deals specifically with computer games. I don't see how this makes the article bias in any way, especially when there is an entire section, approximately one and a half pages long that deals with development and software on multicore processors and licencing for high-end data center and technical applications. The paragraph which you claim is bias has full justification for being in this article - computer games have a major role driving the development of hardware, and it has been doing so since the late 1990s. If the article ignored the application of multicore to consumer and entertainment systems (all modern video game console processors - Broadway, Cell, Xenon are multicore), then the article would be truly biased and misleading as it is promoting a one sided view of the concept. Rilak (talk) 06:46, 21 July 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  page is a little too PC centric 

message: I suggest merging "manycore processing unit" into "multi-core".
They look like the same thing to me.
--68.0.124.33 (talk) 22:38, 10 September 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Well, "manycore" is just a term used to describe a particular type of multicore microprocessor, so the definition of manycore should be mentioned in the lead of this article, and the manycore article should be turned into a redirect. The current manycore article is mostly a definition at the moment anyways, with some opinionated statements about scalability and the position of manycore, so I don't think this will be problematic. Rilak (talk) 08:53, 11 September 2008 (UTC)

text: I have redirected many-core to this article now. henrik•talk 17:14, 29 October 2008 (UTC)

text: There should be an article for chips with unrelated processing units on the same chip, but I think that ManyCore isn't the best term for it.  (Is ManyCore one word?  Is it a trademark?) Gah4 (talk) 20:31, 14 August 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  merge 

message: I would have thought ManyCore deserves a separate page: Multi Core and Many Core devices are qualitatively different. The former is usually an SMP CPU. The latter is usually a separate accelerator.(network on a chip, scratchpads, non-coherent caches - e.g. adapteva,kalray; throughput oriented, GPUS). Intels MIC is a qualitatively different device to a multicore CPU - designed for throughput over latency. 
We could keep the divergent issues in their history and current trends separated out. A many-core page could be fleshed out in more detail.  Fmadd (talk) 00:26, 14 April 2016 (UTC)
replies: text: There should be an article for chips with unrelated processing units on the same chip, but I think that ManyCore isn't the best term for it.  (Is ManyCore one word?  Is it a trademark?) Gah4 (talk) 20:31, 14 August 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  Contesting the Merge 

message: The first paragraph of the article is a bit long and could ease a little clean up. Perhaps we should break it into two or more paragraphs? Either way, I found one sentence particularly confusing. Can anyone decipher this:
The most commercially significant (or at least the most 'obvious') multi-core processors are those used in personal computers (primarily from Intel and AMD) and game consoles (e.g., the eight-core Cell processor in the PS3 and the three-core Xenon processor in the Xbox 360). 
76.22.72.163 (talk) 09:22, 18 January 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  First paragraph 

message: The current organization of example chips with the major heading "Commercial examples" seems non-optimal to me since there are few non-commercial chip examples and they probably don't deserve their own major section.  Any objections to organizing "Hardware" and "Software" as major headings with "Commercial" and "Research" as sub-headings?  BTW, the Univ of Maryland ref does not appear to belong here in my opinion. MBbjv (talk) 04:20, 3 May 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: Since there were no objections, I made the changes. MBbjv (talk) 02:11, 28 May 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Why only commercial chips? 

message: so we have dual and quad core cpus these days, but not sexa-cores. all of a sudden we jump from latin to greek naming and we have hexa-cores instead. so why didnt we have di- and tetra-cores then instead in the first place? is this some means to avoid the sex(a)- prefix in the english realm? too many people and too many closeminded folks all over this planet? also read: http://www.brightsideofnews.com/news/2009/8/25/intel-to-demonstrate-a-32nm-core-i9-cpu-in-september.aspx  —Preceding unsigned comment added by Suggestednickname (talk • contribs) 06:49, 27 August 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  greek and latin prefixes for multicore - why afraid of consistent naming in english realm? 

message: * I think the list of examples is too long and may be unnecessary, possibly spammy.
* There are too many external links, and it is in danger of becoming a WP:LINKFARM. – ukexpat (talk) 03:30, 3 December 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Couple of points... 

message: Unless Ian Foster is the author of this Wiki article, at least some portions have been plagiarized. Under Software Impact, the section about Partitioning, Communication, etc. were extracted word for word from here: http://www.mcs.anl.gov/~itf/dbpp/text/node16.html
Jif101 (talk) 20:53, 10 December 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Plagiarism? 

message: The thing that no one seems to want to tell me is this: If a dual- or quad-core CPU is listed, they'll say it's 3.6Ghz. Now, does that mean that the effective speed of the whole thing is two or four times that? So if I buy a dual-core 1.8Ghz, am I really getting 3.6 overall? I mean, obviously there's threading issues that would prevent this, but I'm sure you know what I'm asking. Is the listed speed the overall speed or speed per core? Is there no real speed increase for multiple cores, and really just an efficiency increase? I'm very confused. --Buddy13 (talk) 19:04, 26 December 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: I was also wondering this.  I suspect that many people who come here are researching CPUs with the intent of buying, so I think it would be of great help if we added in a section describing how to compare processors, such as discussing the benefits of dual core 2.5 ghz vs quad core 1.6 ghz and the different kinds and values of cache.  This would essentially be a discussion of end-user useability and would totally be appropriate, IMO.  Khono (talk) 11:26, 10 April 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  But how fast is it? 

message: Sorry -- I'm not a "top expert" on this by a long shot but the following line hit me as a bit off-the-mark.
:A many-core processor is one in which the number of cores is large enough that traditional multi-processor techniques are no longer efficient — this threshold is somewhere in the range of several tens of cores — and probably requires a network on chip.
The distinction between 'multi' and 'many' is the same as 'some' and 'a lot'.  It's just more cores with no really clear line defining a break point -- I've yet to see one stated.  Having something about many vs multi (parent to child style) is good but not as the start of the sentence it is in.
Outside of some SoC attempts, many-core systems are being implemented as multiple multi-core processors -- as in successors to single-core processors by multi-core in multi-processor systems.  Outside of the old single CPU to multi-CPU "competition", I see none with respect to these two architectures.  They are complementary in nature versus some kind of "replacement" due to limits.
Each CPU in a system has a socket in the board.  This grants "off-chip" IO paths of a limited nature irrespective of the number of cores - 1 socket has a path to the rest of the system.  So if operations require more off-chip access, multiple CPU's, each with their own bus, will outperform a single CPU with multiple cores.  If, on the other hand, you have more "on-chip" processing/communications required, avoiding the CPU's communicate across the bus speeds up that communication plus "on-chip" functions will tend to be faster.  
So it's comparing "on-chip" vs "off-chip" and a shuffle of where traffic jams can/will occur. With multiple-cores, they will hit a limit at the shared bus as the cores each require different "off-chip" resources so, at some point, how many cores can be stacked on a single slot/bus will be hit.  Diminishing returns style.  When?  Like I said, it's not my main field and even if it were, I doubt it can be predicted beyond generalization versus exacting -- especially in the generic "computer" market that spans scientific through arts around to 'fun'.
For those looking for a higher performance single CPU slot solution, the multi-core systems tend to be far more cost effective than going with multi-CPU systems and this is how they are positioned in the market across platforms -- multiple-cores > 1 core.  As such, this technology is flat out replacing single-cores across most systems that use them but not so with systems that use multiple CPU's -- they are moving (or have moved) to adopt this enhancement as part of their existing architecture.
Last; the NoC comment is also not needed in this area.  That's a distraction that really adds nothing to defining multi-core processors in this "introduction" area.  SoC if you like but NoC is more a separate "sub-system" commentary than dealing with a CPU's architecture. (sorry "network on a chip" = NoC)
--Eleazaros (talk) 05:36, 13 October 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  A change might be in order 

message: There is a new Stanford video on programming many-core computers at How to Program the Many Cores for Inconsistency Robustness with slides available at . It argues for using the Actor model together with "Organizational Programming"24.180.11.235 (talk) 04:08, 19 January 2011 (UTC)
thread_title: Stanford Video on Programming Many-core computers

message: I think the author, or some writer, should edit to say, first, what the advantages are before saying the advantages of multi-core may be lost when the processor is many-core.  It would be more structurally sound that way, I think.  BriEnBest (talk) 22:21, 5 May 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  The first paragraph says the advantages of multi-core are lost, without first saying what the advantages are. 

message: This article has been tagged with the following:
:This article has multiple issues. Please help improve it or discuss these issues on the talk page.
yet no one has indicated what the specific needs of this tag are.  The tag says, It needs additional references or sources for verification. Tagged since June 2009. Now this article currently has twelve sources.  Which part of the article needs sourcing?  It's possible that when it was tagged two years ago it had little to no sources, but the problem is when people wantonly tag articles without explanations on the talk page (which is the minimal expectation I have for a tagger) that these articles can sit tagged for years without anything changing.  If the lazy buffoons who had tagged this in 2009 had come here and given some indication of what their concerns were, this could have been resolved long ago.
I will remove the tag until such time as the tagger(s) give(s) us some guidance here. HuskyHuskie (talk) 08:45, 13 June 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: Yes, that's what this page discusses, and has discussed since it was first created.  That comment is a bit old now; the first multi-core processors were, in fact, dual-core, and they came out quite a while ago, and we now have chips with more than two cores on the chip. Guy Harris (talk) 16:28, 28 June 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Drive by tag 

message: Do you think we should make a new article that's a list instead of including the list in this article?  --Harizotoh9 (talk) 07:56, 22 October 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  List of Multi-core processors 

message: I've read quite a few articles that refer to singlecore as 1 core, multicore as 2 to 8 cores and many-cores as 8+ cores. I think the main distinction is running multiple single threaded applications vs running one/several multithreaded applications. In the early days of the Athlon X2, most applications were single threaded, but we are slowly approaching this multi-threaded (many-threaded) era. Is it worth have a separate multi/many core distinction? I do think both should be in the same article regardless. WinampLlama (talk) 07:27, 27 October 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Multicore vs Many-core 

message: "The challenge of writing parallel code clearly offsets this benefit.[5]"
Links to:
http://www.futurechips.org/chip-design-for-all/a-multicore-save-energy.html
A blog post, which is not clear at all. You might also see from the blog comments that the author ignored voltage, periphericals, etc.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 192.54.144.229 (talk) 12:48, 5 February 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  Terrible link 

message: "Typically,[according to whom?] proprietary enterprise-server software is licensed "per processor"." Is this really true? What is if your PC/server has 2 sockets, do you need 2 licenses then? -- Laber□T 04:28, 6 June 2013 (UTC)
replies: text: For enterprise server software, you might need a two-processor license if the server has 2 sockets and 2 processor chips in those sockets.  See, for example, the "Server Licensing Not Requiring CALs" section of the Microsoft Volume Licensing - Client Access License (CAL) Guide.  It speaks of both per-processor and per-core licensing. Guy Harris (talk) 06:35, 6 June 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  Licensing "per processor"? 

message: OpenHMPP Website: http://www.openhmpp.org/ looks very unrelated: "Should You Take Menopause Supplements? ...". Has the website moved? 141.3.44.17 (talk) 15:24, 25 February 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  "Broken" link 

message: What do you think about limiting the examples to 8 cores or more and only to ones with wikilinks? Daniel.Cardenas (talk) 13:00, 16 April 2014 (UTC)
replies: text: Meh...  There are currently too many of them, I agree, however all of them have 2+ cores thus they qualify.  Might be usable to have such a broad list. — Dsimic (talk | contribs) 06:27, 17 April 2014 (UTC)
replies: text:  I agree. A massive reduction is needed. Maybe limit the entries to just the first 2/3 commercial chips for each number of cores? That would keep the list clear. User:GKFXtalk 14:18, 2 January 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  Commercial examples - cleanup V2 

message: In order comply with the MOS:JARGON guideline,
I changed the Greek and Latin numeral prefix terms "hex-", "hexa-", and "octo-" currently used in this article without definition to "6-" and "8-".
A previous edit  commented that 'These names are not "common" '.
Do we need a table in this article like the one deleted by that edit, or can we assume that people looking up "octo-Core" will recognize that it means the same thing as what this article now calls "8-core"?
--DavidCary (talk) 17:09, 25 April 2014 (UTC)
replies: text: I agree that using "6-core" and "8-core" is better.  At the same time, I'd say that such a table isn't need, but it should be usable to mention "hexa-core" and "octo-core" as alternative terms as they're used from time to time; went ahead and  the article's lead section further, please check it out. — Dsimic (talk | contribs) 05:47, 26 April 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  Translate Greek to English 

message: what is the exact or frequently used name for 8-core? I saw "Octo-core" and "Oct-core" in the article but Octa-core is used for many articles on the web (you can google it). Moreover, the term "Oct-care" cannot be searched by google, is it a typo?--Terry0201 (talk) 03:31, 30 May 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  Octo-core? Octa-core? Oct-core? 

message: Also, adding more cache suffers from diminishing returns.[citation needed]  Since this is pretty much the first rule in cache design, and unless there is more discussion on the citation needed, I am removing the CN. There are many questions related to cache in multi-core processors, but this doesn't seem to be asking them. Gah4 (talk) 20:42, 14 August 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  Cache 

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replies: text: Fixed first one using the Wayback Machine (just as you did for another www.futurechips.org in the subsequent modification...); second one works. Guy Harris (talk) 03:13, 8 February 2018 (UTC)
thread_title:  External links modified 

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thread_title:  External links modified (February 2018) 

message: Most applications, however, are not accelerated so much unless programmers invest a prohibitive amount of effort in re-factoring the whole problem.
The word "prohibitive" is not encyclopedic to begin with, but I concede that it was common currency in this space for some while. It was largely applying to legacy codebases written before most developers had the first clue about concurrency. 
Secondly, as a broad brush, this simply isn't true. Just about any application that depends upon linear algebra can be accelerated by replacing the linear algebra library with a library that's highly threaded. 
On the other hand, if your core data structure to represent a document in a word-processing application is not inherently thread safe, multicore isn't going to buy you much without first biting a prohibitive bullet. 
What the original author probably meant by "most" is most user-facing applications, viewed through a consumerist lens of availability bias (everyone's favourite availability bias as determined by most people's availability bias concerning common sentiment). Bad rabbit hole. Shun, eschew, avoid. — MaxEnt 15:04, 24 August 2020 (UTC)
replies: text: Merged, and on top of this I think that the provided source itself seems unreliable. — Huisecorp (talk) 04:35, 6 January 2022 (UTC)
thread_title:  Prohibitive flagged as dubious 

message: In section Heterogeneous systems, should OpenAMP be OpenMP? --Mortense (talk) 14:01, 13 February 2021 (UTC)
replies: text: No. OpenAMP ≠ OpenMP. Guy Harris (talk) 18:25, 13 February 2021 (UTC)
thread_title:  Should OpenAMP be OpenMP?