Dual-Core Processors Coming to Notebooks in 2005

[Jason Dunn]

<div class='os_post_top_link'><a href='http://www.pcworld.com/news/article/0,aid,117702,tk,dn090804X,00.asp' target='_blank'>http://www.pcworld.com/news/article/0,aid,117702,tk,dn090804X,00.asp</a><br /><br /></div><i>"Intel executives will spend part of this week at the Intel Developer Forum talking about Yonah, the company's first dual-core notebook chip, said Paul Otellini, president and chief operating officer at Intel, during a meeting with reporters here. Sources told IDG News Service in May that Intel is planning Yonah as the dual-core successor to the Pentium M processor. Otellini confirmed the code name for the project, but declined to provide any further details ahead of a keynote address by mobile executive Anand Chandrasekher scheduled for Wednesday."</i><br /><br />Can you imagine a 2 Ghz P4 M processor with dual cores, hitting 4 Ghz of media-crunching power on a laptop? That would be seriously wicked. :twisted: I wonder though what power consumption will be like with these dual-core CPUs?

[michael]

I'm betting one core is disabled when running on the battery to save power...

[Jason Dunn]

I'm betting one core is disabled when running on the battery to save power...

Could be. But I have a CPU throttling tool that I use on my laptop that allows me to override the Intel SpeedStep and force it to maximum speed. Let's hope something similar would be possible with dual cores. :-)

[mcsouth]

Just out of curiousity....do you think that some apps will need to be updated/rewritten in order to take advantage of a dual core proc? My understanding is that there is a big difference between a single user version and multi-proc (server) versions of some software.......Adobe Distiller, for example. When AMD demoed their dual core server chips last week, I seem to recall that the software was viewing the server as an 8 proc server instead of a 4 proc server, because it was running four dual core procs. It may take a bit for the full power of dual core procs to become known.....

[Jason Dunn]

Just out of curiousity....do you think that some apps will need to be updated/rewritten in order to take advantage of a dual core proc?

Yes, but many of those apps have already been re-written to take advantage of the Intel hyper-threading technology. If the software can see two CPUs, such as the Windows Media Encoder, it can use both for data crunching.