With the recent release of Intel’s quad-core for desktop systems it is making me wonder what they are thinking. Desktop systems in their current state can barely use two cores in their entirety, much less four. The issue with multi-core systems is the fact that no program for the desktop is made to utilize this feature.
Most people do not really know what cores are, much less what they
really do. The easiest way to think of a core is in its single-core
stage, the core is the part of the processor that handles the function
of processing. By this I mean its the thing that follows the
instructions given by a program to execute a task. In most cases the
more cores you have the slower each of them become. This is just a
limit of the technology of today.
One my think, “great, so
having more cores that follow the instructions things should get done
faster!” I really wish that was the case, but there are limits. In its
most basic state a program or process loads once and the instructions
can only be handled by one core. The problem becomes the fact that if
the program is processor intensive it is only handled by one of the
cores. This is wonderful if using a program that will create multiple
processes, also called threads. Most good server technology was
designed to work to work this way while the desktop is not.
Take
for example most games, they are not multi-threaded so the program will
do no better having multiple cores. In actuality they will normally
preform worse as the core speed is slower in a multi-core system.
There
are some situations where dual-cores do help in desktop computing. One
of these is if you are a multi-tasker. Each program you run has its own
thread so if one program is a resource hog the other core will handle
the other operations.
So, in all reality if you are buying a
multi-core system without a specific task in mind you are wasting your
money. There will be a time where multiple cores are necessary to run
programs, but that is in the future. The good thing I see with the
quad-core systems for the desktop coming out is that the price of all
other processors should be dropping.
