Why is Intel implementing multi-core architectures across its product line?
Through Intel’s ongoing research and development efforts at Intel, the doubling of transistors every couple of years has been maintained for forty years. But scaling out could not continue indefinitely because of several, less-friendly laws of physics. A 1993-era Intel Pentium Processor had around 3 million transistors, while today’s Intel® Itanium® 2 processor has nearly 1 billion transistors. If this rate continued, Intel processors would soon be producing more heat per square centimeter than the surface of the sun—which is why the problem of heat is already setting hard limits to frequency increases. These challenges and others— power, memory latency, resistance-capacitance (RC) delay and scalar performance – are described in the 2004 Technology@Intel Magazine story titled, “Architecting the Era of Tera.” [PDF 298KB]. Despite these challenges, users continue to demand increased performance. Today, there are more than half a billion PC users worldwide. Home users rely on PCs for deli
