> I am fairly certain the AMD chips are designed as 3-core. A quick > google finds http://www.wired.com/techbiz/it/news/2007/09/tricore
This paragraph at the bottom sneaks in the reasoning for the decision. -- Another potential benefit Brookwood points to is production efficiency. If AMD finds it is having many of its quad-core Opteron processors coming off the production line with only three of the four cores fully functioning, then it can still market those as tri-core instead of chucking them into the trash can. -- So if they have a defect rate that leaves three out of four cores operational 4% of the time for all quad core chips they're just looking for a way to eke more money out of what would otherwise be resources lost. They'll disable the fourth core on some of their products... Maybe even more of their product than actually have defects. That would all be in order to sell the disabled quad cores at a slim or zero profit margin... but rescue the production costs for the chips that come out with a defective core that they would otherwise lose their entire investment on manufacturing. Eventually if they get a lower defect rate, the 3 core chips will drop off of the market. Until then it's kind of like buying clothing that's an odd measurement and didn't pass inspection. It may work perfectly for you, even if it's not what was intended for the mass market. The only CPU I know of that has 3 cores intentionally is the Xenon PowerPC chip in the Xbox 360. I don't know why they did that... -- JC Don't forget, BarCamp Nashville is this weekend. Oct. 18 9am - 4pm http://www.barcampnashville.com --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "NLUG" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/nlug-talk?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
