CPUs, Cores and Threads: How Many Processors Do I Have?
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I have had college level PC hardware and OS classes at 2 Universities, and that is the clearest, best explanation of CPU's I have ever read. Well done.
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I enjoyed your presentation, having run a IBM Power 7 series, where you pay to have additional processors (Cores) online. You can use one, or pay to open up the other's. Novel concept. Hyperthreading has always been misleading IMHO when you suddenly see 2 representations of a processor in area's like task manager, 1 core, 2 processors, Hyper. I am always amazed at the speed of a system travelling up, now bus configurations need to be changed so memory is more efficient, HDD - always seems to bottleneck, you never want your processor starved for information to be processed. What of systems that cant get information to the processor fast enough or efficiently -32 on a 64 comes to mind. Even SSD cannot cope, and any SATA will be for drive speed not processor power. Seems information arriving to the processor, cannot be fast enough - you will eventually, in clock cycles, empty cache - just a pipe dream of moving slow to faster, but still you need to fill cache? To truly implement speed, many bus, sources, and methods of moving data will need to be re-examined.
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@ChrisJ that's primarily why investments are rarely in processors but in other areas. Drives have made huge advancements in speed while processors have mostly stagnated. Even in the AMD64 world people are moving towards single CPU systems instead of dual because even entry level CPUs are often far and away more processing capacity than a normal business can utilize.
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Even SSD's work on the SATA subsystem - SSD efficient, but what of the SATA limit? Drives will need to be 'on the board' with more efficient connections (Direct SSD?) Chip storage is going that direction I believe.
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You can already get PCIe based SSD drives - much faster bus than SATA bus.
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@ChrisJ said:
Even SSD's work on the SATA subsystem - SSD efficient, but what of the SATA limit? Drives will need to be 'on the board' with more efficient connections (Direct SSD?) Chip storage is going that direction I believe.
Not fast ones. PCIe cards have been standard for most of the decade. Look at FusionIO cards, as an example. That's what servers normally use. And faster 1.8" hot swap SSDs come with an M.2 interface. SATA and SAS are only used for entry level SSDs.
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High speed SSDs today are just one step removed from being system memory.
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PCIe is good, but in most cases I have seen it is primarily for graphics, so it is designed for large data transfers to the bus, and transactions back seem to be for result based calc's. I would like to know more about PCIe, and its connection to the source, time to visit a Maker's site.
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@ChrisJ said:
PCIe is good, but in most cases I have seen it is primarily for graphics, so it is designed for large data transfers to the bus, and transactions back seem to be for result based calc's.
I've never seen it used for graphics. Not that it isn't, but I've never seen that come up.
PCIe SSD cards are the standard for high end servers. Million plus IOPS per card. Very low latency, huge bandwidth.
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Sorry, I was thinking of your Compaq Deskpro. Compaq, do not age yourself that way. (HP thrown in for good measure).
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@ChrisJ said:
Sorry, I was thinking of your Compaq Deskpro. Compaq, do not age yourself that way. (HP thrown in for good measure).
Article was from 2008, they were still Compaqs then.
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@scottalanmiller Sure, I 'believe' you. Yes old with no good formal bus training. I am impressed to see your article, and the depth of your input. Thank You.
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@ChrisJ said:
@scottalanmiller Sure, I 'believe' you. Yes old with no good formal bus training. I am impressed to see your article, and the depth of your input. Thank You.
If you check the Google cache, or the Internet Archive Way Back Machine, I'm pretty sure that it shows it from early 2008. That was one of my first articles written while working at the bank. Back before SMBITJournal was around.
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@scottalanmiller No, I am sorry, the first part was in jest, the rest true. PC (Compaq) is old with no good formal bus training, should have clarified this. I 'believe' you wish not to age yourself as I do. I have removed Compaq from my vocabulary. Sorry thing, once I was certified for their products. Hmmm.
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I was always a Compaq fan. I came to Compaq by way of being a DEC fan in the 1980s (@Minion-Queen is an ex-DECer BTW!!) and then to HP by way of Compaq. It's the Proliants and DeskPros that won me over, not the NetServers!
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I still own a 200 hz proliant, in my garage somewhere, whole 6gb drive and all. Backplane made upgrade's a Compaq only design. Great proprietary machine that will never be more than it is.
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OOP's Proliant should be Presario, home machine. My Wife bought it for me as a gift. Proliants were at work, and workhorses they were. NT4 Days, replacing Novell servers left and right.
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@ChrisJ said:
OOP's Proliant should be Presario, home machine. My Wife bought it for me as a gift. Proliants were at work, and workhorses they were. NT4 Days, replacing Novell servers left and right.
Ah, Presario. Yes, those were garbage. Compaq did not make those, they just rebranded them.
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Yes, in the garage, in 20 years maybe as the apple 2+ worth 5$, she spent 2700 for it, and I feel it is not depreciated yet, decomposed yes, but wow I cant throw out 2700. I know garbage when I see it, I wish she would have asked me first, that is when I started to bring work pc's home.
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I still have FOUR Commodores! Not including my Amiga.
