[maroon1]

Advanced Micro Devices may not be in position to release its new dual-processor enthusiast-class platform this year, however, it may be thinking about a different product, according to some unofficial information. Apparently, the company may be mulling about a triple-core microprocessor for desktops.

According to a news-story at Hard Tecs 4U web-site, AMD is working on a processor that would have three processing engines. The company reportedly told its partners about the AMD Phenom X3 chip at a closed meeting, explaining that the chipmaker plans to release such a product because of “market demand”.

The new triple-core microprocessors will feature its own design and will not be quad-core chips with one core disabled, according to the web-site. Nevertheless, the chips will still include 2MB of shared L3 cache and will take advantage of other K10 micro-architecture features, such as SSE4A instruction set, 128-bit floating point units (FPU) and so on. Obviously, the chips will also have advanced power management capabilities.

According to estimates by X-bit labs, each processing engine of quad-core AMD Opteron/Phenom processors takes about 13% of the die size. Given the whole die size of approximately 285mm² and about 218 chip candidates obtained from every 300mm wafer, X-bit labs believes that it is highly unlikely that AMD had decided to develop a separate tripe-core design with about 247mm² die size and 250 chip candidates obtained from a 300mm wafer unless the yields of the new chips are so low that the company needs a redundant third processing engine to create a dual-core product with sufficient yield.





Technically AMD can easily make microprocessors with odd amount of processing engines thanks to its DirectConnect architecture. However, it is not completely clear how AMD plans to position such chips, considering that it will have to fight both dual-core and quad-core Intel Core 2 processors with its AMD Phenom and AMD Athlon 64 X2 offerings.

AMD did not comment on the news-story.

X-bit labs - AMD Thinks Triple-Core Microprocessors – Rumours [UPDATED 2].

[Poizen22]

it wouldnt work, u cant devide by 3 the mathematical work load has to be even.
look at it like the 360 cpu it is triple core technically. its just one duel core die, plus a single core die, on the same chip.

[maroon1]

Originally Posted by Amd gt player

it wouldnt work, u cant devide by 3 the mathematical work load has to be even.
look at it like the 360 cpu it is triple core technically. its just one duel core die, plus a single core die, on the same chip.

Yea, and don't forget that the tri-core of Xbox 360 can execute 6 threads simultaneously. In other words, it is a three core that acts like 6 cores. Just like P4 with HT acts like two core processor, even though it is only 1 physical core processor.

[Wildside]

Originally Posted by Amd gt player

it wouldnt work, u cant devide by 3 the mathematical work load has to be even.
look at it like the 360 cpu it is triple core technically. its just one duel core die, plus a single core die, on the same chip.

ya, equals triple-core .

[Poizen22]

never ever gonna work ever. cause thats how long the decimals are if you devide 100 by 3 it keeps going on for ever and ever.

[maroon1]

Then how does Xbox360 processor work ?

It has 3 cores !

[Wildside]

Originally Posted by maroon1

Then how does Xbox360 processor work ?

It has 3 cores !

Research here on Wikipedia.org about it n educate urself .

Xenon (processor) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

here i even gave u a head start lol.

[Poizen22]

it like havign 3 seperate cpu's with yper threading. each cpu cant share teh work load because they arent connected, so its really just like having 3 cpu's to do three didferent things, unlike a pc multi core cpu, it has multiple cores that can work together to acomplish the same thing.

[Apokalipse]

Originally Posted by Amd gt player

never ever gonna work ever. cause thats how long the decimals are if you devide 100 by 3 it keeps going on for ever and ever.

you can split it into 33, 33 and 34
Plus, different instructions take different amounts of time to complete, based on an extremely range of circumstances.

Originally Posted by maroon1

X-bit labs believes that it is highly unlikely that AMD had decided to develop a separate tripe-core design with about 247mm² die size and 250 chip candidates obtained from a 300mm wafer unless the yields of the new chips are so low that the company needs a redundant third processing engine to create a dual-core product with sufficient yield.

I doubt that the yields will be low. AMD has been focusing very hard on getting higher yields from its fabs.

On the other hand, Intel just builds more fabs.

[Trotter]

From what I read, the triple cores are to fill in the gaps between dual and quad. think of them as quad Semprons. There is a theory out that a triple is still a quad and could possibly be "unlocked", much as some GPUs pipes are unlocked.

Still too early to draw judgments, though. Once it hits the ground is up and running we'll see what is and what ain't. Until then we're only guessing.