Ask HN: Why are modern Intel CPUs not getting a lot more cores?

Re:Ask HN: Why are modern Intel CPUs not getting a lot more ... by detaro on Wednesday August 17, 2016 @08:15AM (#12304062)

Because common desktop applications still don't do much with multiple cores, and thus a few fast cores are better (and techniques like TurboBoost are useful, where cores sleep to free the energy budget to allow a single core to clock even higher). And for many things, CPUs have been fast enough for quite a while now.

So the common CPUs have only a few cores, people who really want more get to pay the premium for the gamer models or Xeons, since they don't really have alternatives, and Intel knows that ;)

For servers, you can get CPUs with 4-16 small(er), low-power cores instead of a few large ones. (Atom C2xxx, Xeon-D)

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Ask HN: Why are modern Intel CPUs not getting a lot more ... by melling on Wednesday August 17, 2016 @08:25AM (#12304109)

How many applications are actively running on a modern desktop? The kernel and GUI... The modern browser with Javascript engine? An always listening Cortana or Siri would be nice for many people. What's the current threading on modern games? I'd think at least 8 cores could be utilized.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Ask HN: Why are modern Intel CPUs not getting a lot more ... by detaro on Wednesday August 17, 2016 @08:32AM (#12304147)

But could they be better utilized than 4 cores with the same energy budget and cost?

Most of the time, most applications use barely any CPU at all. What you really feel is the moments when a single application suddenly needs a lot of CPU, and when it isn't parallelized it wants a single fast one, not several slower ones. I almost never see my system under 100 % load, but I regularly see processes maxing a single core.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Ask HN: Why are modern Intel CPUs not getting a lot more ... by melling on Wednesday August 17, 2016 @08:52AM (#12304232)

You'd think most apps could be built to utilize at least 2 cores, instead of pinning just 1 core.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Ask HN: Why are modern Intel CPUs not getting a lot more ... by hamishforbes on Wednesday August 17, 2016 @09:19AM (#12304417)

You can get full blown Xeon chips with 22 cores per socket nowadays. You don't have to go ARM or Xeon-D to get a ton of cores. http://ark.intel.com/products/91317/Intel-Xeon-Processor-E5-...

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Ask HN: Why are modern Intel CPUs not getting a lot more ... by detaro on Wednesday August 17, 2016 @09:53AM (#12304671)

The point I wanted to make is that in that market segment, you can choose between many small or a few large cores for the same price, not just buy a bigger CPU for more money.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Ask HN: Why are modern Intel CPUs not getting a lot more ... by pjmlp on Wednesday August 17, 2016 @09:24AM (#12304446)

You can still distribute processes across cores and there are lots of them on modern OSes.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Ask HN: Why are modern Intel CPUs not getting a lot more ... by detaro on Wednesday August 17, 2016 @09:56AM (#12304685)

But what do you gain from distributing processes that mostly don't do much to more cores, at the cost of single-thread performance? (Which I'm going to assume to compare roughly equal power usage or costs. Or is that assumption horribly broken?)

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Ask HN: Why are modern Intel CPUs not getting a lot more ... by pjmlp on Wednesday August 17, 2016 @10:29AM (#12304947)

You get more stuff done in actual parallel execution instead of having processes fighting for CPU time.

Specially when some of those processes are CPU-hogs like firewalls and anti-virus.

[ Parent | on HN ]