Intel unveiled a power gate feature incorporating a “turbo” mode for its upcoming Nehalem family of processors. With the turbo mode, in a situation where not all the cores are necessary for a particular workload, the ones that are idle will be turned off and power is channeled to the cores that are active, making them more efficient. Intel also showcased the Nehalem-EX for the expandable server market, which consists of eight-core processors on a single die.
I just wonder what will happen when we all gonna have 16-way machines (8 core x 2 threads ?) on our desktops…
It is actually a good way to balance between multi and single threaded performance.
sorry but i just can’t ressist
from my experience i can tell that if i’ll be using some MS OS it’ll be just as slow as vista is now. remember those “what intel gave us, microsoft took from us” articles? 
no flaming but the problem is if i use vista on my 2.4 GHz core2duo it feels just like ME on my old 400MHz Pentium II no matter if use those sassy glass window frames or not
Edited 2008-08-20 18:51 UTC
It doesn’t work like that. It’s all about creating new needs. You want to sell your new products. This is where Vista comes in handy. I’ll hazard a guess: these new CPUs are designed to work with Windows 7.
i agree but in case of MS i’m glad i don’t need it and hopefully never will. in case i will “need” their OS i’ll return to the cave and sell my comp
Something is seriously wrong with your P.C.
I use Linux/*BSD/*Solaris/Windows and yes even vista and I dont see it running slow.
lucky you but i expected new computer to run faster that’s why i bought it. thx god for hackintosh.
ok enough because this will end up as flaming no matter how i try to avoid it
PS: i’m also on XP, *Linux, FreeBSD, Mac OS and no problems with speed, no HDD doing something all the time, no full 2G memory. tried server 2008 as desktop os and i have to say i like it more compared to vista
sorry for my english
Edited 2008-08-20 19:38 UTC
I think you are full of crap and read an article about Vista over a year and a half ago and that is what you are using for your “experience” on the OS.
I use ultimate 32 and my hard drive is not churning away all the time.
😀 cool it down kiddo. i’ve seen vista/microsoft maniacs like you before and i won’t fight with you ppl. you’re just too dangerous to you and ppl around you. i knew it was a mistake to register on OS NEWS after all those years
You think I am a MS freak?
that is hilarious since I used Vista, OS X, and Ubuntu at home.
I am not an MS apologist, I simply can’t stand people spewing crap.
pls i really don’t want to fight with anyone here. i was just talking about my really bad experience with vista contra all other OS’s i’m using. i’m not the first nor the last one. maybe it’s because my comp maybe it’s because ppl around me always say they want XP not vista i don’t know just forget it
You must be lying or deaf then. I have a new machine running Vista, I’m sitting next to it as I type this post. Nothing is running on the machine but my browser, but it is pinging on the hard drive about once every second or two. Very annoying.
I use OS X and Linux mostly, FreeBSD and OpenBSD on some servers I run, and Vista when I’m on my wife’s computer. Vista is by far the lardiest of the systems. It just can’t seem to get its fat butt going.
Vistas Indexing is quite different than that of the past, it does it when load is low, and if you have alot of files it may constantly be looking around, whereas linux and such is usually scheduled for a certain timeframe (eg 3:00am or whatever you set) It really shouldent bother performance much, and if its annoying then you either have a loud drive, or a very bright indicator light (my raptor barely whispers so it doesnt usually catch my eye) The only way I even notice its doing this is if im actually looking for it. other than that it doesnt really seem to mess with things.
Likewise my roommate has a blue beacon of madness flickering off the front of his case, and running vista bothered him quite a bit because of that. Couple that with an old noisy hdd and I can see the point.
Yes! I do have one of those blue LEDs that are as pleasant as a sharp jab to the eye with a stiff carrot. I think Vista is annoying for myriad other reasons though.
what BeOS did years ago (but manually) with the buttons on the Pulse app ?
mmm BeOS speedy gonzales
No, it makes Speedy Gonzales look like Regular Gonzales.
😀
Except (and I admit I didn’t read the article) it sounds like they’re boosting the performance on the remaining cores by channeling the power from the ones that are disabled (i.e., boosting single-threaded processing slightly while using the same amount of total power?)
Correct. For example, in a 6x 1.6 GHz CPU, they could turn off 4 of the cores, use some of the saved power to overclock the remaining two cores to 1.8 or 2.0 GHz, and get faster performance with less overall power usage.
For a minute I thought we were going to see the comeback of the good old Turbo button. The fancy digital display that used to show the cpu frequency could now show how many cores are active.
I am sure some case accessories company will create a digital display so you know what is happening. They might even include a button that interfaces with software installed in Windows to manually control this feature. (if at all possible).
Ventajou: same thing I was thinking
I guess remembering the *original* turbo button makes us old now…sigh. I think the last system I had that had one was a 486/33. The turbo button cut it down to 16.
At the end of the day, the Turbo button was good for consumers. It gave them the feeling they were getting something great. The computer was noticeably “faster” with the Turbo on (despite the fact the whole situation was in fact reversed)
Consumers will believe just about anything if it’s put out in front of them and they surmise what it does themselves.
This is why, even through regular consumers don’t know any of the technical details at all, there’s a widespread disdain for Vista because to them, it’s not the same as they’re used to, and therefore can’t be as good.
Pleasing a consumer is a genuinely difficult thing.
good’ol slashdot flamin’
at the thought of all that lovely per Core(or two) Software Licensing money that is about to literally fall into their laps. With the advent of huge multicore CPU’s their pricing models seem to be outdated buy probably unlikely to change soon.
This issue is what almost scuppered a deal last year where the software costs just became silly when a dual chip Quad core system was specified. They ended up with a dual core box instead for one software component. It is running at 70=90% CPU Load all day while the rest ran easily (10-20% cpu) on the 8core beast sitting next to it in the server room.
For example,
An 8 core system running Oracle 11g Enterprise requires 4 CPU Licenses which is 4x$47K + $10K per annum Update and support. Compare that to the cost of the hardware and you groan, shrug your shoulders and look for a different solution.
The data used above was taken from http://www.oracle.com/corporate/pricing/technology-price-list.pdf
The hardware cost (ironically from IBM)was approx 1/10th of the Oracle Software license.
Its a funny old world isn’t it….
The cool thing about the old turbo button was the case manufacturers never knew which processor you were going to use so you could change the display. Mine said “HI”.