03.17.08 | 7:30 PM
Intel's widely expected to release new quad-core laptop processors this
fall, but even the chipmaker admits it could be years before the chips
really go mainstream.
Courtesy Alienware
Stanford president John Hennessy calls parallel programming for
multicore processors the biggest challenge computer science has faced
in more than 50 years. But that's not stopping Intel from moving ahead
with plans to bring even greater core counts to your laptop.
According to trade-media reports, Intel is readying a new breed of
quad-core mobile processors for release this fall, marking what could
be the first concerted effort by the chip giant to aim its high-end
multicore processors at the general mobile market.
Just don't expect quad-core laptops to become an industry standard anytime soon. As DigiTimes notes, these chips won't come cheap,
and will also suck down significantly more power than today's
mainstream mobile Core 2 Duo processors -- a big no-no in the mobile
space.
Intel has previously stated its intention to release quad-core
notebook processors, but the company would not confirm the details
reported by DigiTimes.
"I've always used the adage, the hardware is ahead of the software
is ahead of the user," says Roger Kay, president of Endpoint
Technologies Associates, who says that quad-core processors in
notebooks will not be suitable for mainstream consumers for quite some
time.
"I can imagine a small niche [of adopters] on the notebook side, but
I still think it's going to be three to four years before [quad-core
laptops] become mainstream," he says.
In addition to high prices and power constraints, there's still a dearth of software
(and programmers) that can properly take advantage of four processing
cores, a fact that will make selling multicore laptops an even harder
prospect for Intel in the near term.
Nevertheless, IDC analyst Bob O'Donnell says the decision to
relocate quad-core from the desktop to the laptop may actually make
sense when you look at future industry trends.
"If you look at where the market is going, we have notebooks sales
surpassing desktops on a worldwide scale in 2009," says O'Donnell.
"Notebooks are clearly the platform of the future; hence all the
movement by Intel and others into the mobile space recently."
In the not-too-distant future, O'Donnell also says that notebooks
may even become the platform of choice for which chipmakers will
develop new technologies, platforms and, yes, even new multicore
processors.
For its own part, Intel seems to be well aware of the challenges it
and the rest of the industry face in creating software that can take
full advantage of multicore chip technology.
Intel and Microsoft are expected to announce a partnership on Tuesday
with the University of California-Berkeley and other universities. The
venture will see both companies funding new research into parallel
programming techniques.
"Given the many attempts at salting parallel computing in the industry
over 40 years, there have only been relatively modest successes to
date," says David Patterson, a professor of computer science at
Berkeley.
Because the entire industry is now betting on multicore processors,
it's also realizing that unless the software community catches up,
there remains no compelling reason for consumers to buy 4-, 8- or any
other multicore processor.
As Jerry Bautista, director of technology management for Intel's
Microprocessor Technology Lab, puts it: "It's not the hardware that's
really compelling. It's what you can do with the hardware that really
is the interesting stuff."
Source:
http://www.wired.com/gadgets/pcs/news/2008/03/quad_core_notebooks
