[Beowulf] amd 3 and 6 core processors

[Greg Lindahl]

On Thu, Aug 20, 2009 at 06:10:43PM +0200, Jonathan Aquilina wrote:

> someone brought this up in another post and instead of hyjacking that post i
> started a new one. what are the advantages of having processors that defy
> the normal development and progressions of cores.
> 
> 2 4 8 etc like intel follows but amd seems to have done 2 3 4 6 ?

Intel has done 6 core processors in the recent past, and there are
currently 3 memory controllers on Nehalem cpus.

The point of a 6 core processor is that's all that fits, plus there isn't
enough memory bandwidth to support 8 cores with many workloads.

The point of 3 core processors was selling at a lower price point, and
being able to sell defective chips as good.

-- greg