Hacker News Reader

"The great revolution that AMD has been talking about... an eight-core desktop processor", is it really a revolution? an 8-core smartphone would be next..

View on HN

Let's be more precise about what they've done. It's a processor designed for high single-core performance -- much higher than smartphone processors -- with good power-efficiency, on a much smaller die than would ordinarily be required for that.

And 8-core smartphone processor is very different from an 8-core desktop/server processor, and much simpler.

Are you saying bulldozer is "designed for high single-core performance"? Because that's exactly where it's failing to deliver, and what will continue to lead to market share.

It delivers very high single-core performance compared to smartphone processors, which was the subject under discussion. How it stacks up against other desktop/server processors is important within that market, but a distinguishing feature of desktop and server processors is that they all have high single-core performance.

Parallax Propellor has 8 cores, a dev kit was $100, last I looked.

It's very cool -- when I was working with microcontrollers, I would have loved to have eight independent cores -- but it's definitely meant more for embedded work, like industrial robotics, than for smartphones.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com