AMD confirms Thuban Turbo Core
AMD's Turbo Core technology boosts clock speed by 500MHz - without raising the TDP - when not all cores are under load.
According to The Tech Report, AMD's next-generation processor is set to take a leaf out of Intel's book and include a dynamic overclocking technology similar to - although simpler than - Turbo Boost.
Designed for use with the 6-core Thuban series - although it's likely to hit the quad-core editions as well, despite no confirmation on that from AMD - Turbo Core increases the performance for poorly multithreaded applications by boosting a group of processing cores by up to 500MHz providing other groups aren't doing any real work.
The idea of splitting the processor into two groups of three cores means that while one group is idle, the other group can be given a 500MHz clockspeed boost without increasing power draw or going over the processor's designated TDP. As an example, if a six-core Thuban chip is running at 3GHz but only three of the cores are in use, it will temporarily overclock to 3.5GHz.
The Turbo Core technology is handled entirely internally and without the need for user interaction - and once more applications are launched, or if a massively multithreaded application rears its head, the boost state will drop back down to stock speeds in order to meet the TDP.
While AMD hasn't taken the opportunity of the Turbo Core announcement to provide hard details on the expected clock speeds for its Thuban range, the company is quoted as suggesting that the Black Edition of its six-core Thuban chip - aimed at enthusiasts and overclockers - will ship at speeds "over 3GHz, substantially" before the 500Mhz Turbo Core overclock is taken into account.
Does the idea of a processor that can dynamically give you a half-a-gigahertz overclock if you're only using certain cores fill you with joy, or is Intel's Turbo Boost - with its multiple speed increments and dynamic temperature monitoring - the better technology? Share your thoughts over in the forums.
Previous Article
16 Comments
Discuss in the forums ReplyI hope for this that they've grouped the cores across the chip - if they group 3 cores on one side of the die or in a corner than you could get a hot spot on the heatspreader.
On another note, when can we get a picture in these news posts with a link to the full-size?? It's a pain when some of them are really worth a closer look.
I bought a Core i5 laptop with Turbo Boost this morning. If AMD had already released something similar I may have considered it, however I would never have waited for it.
that was the other way around. Cores powered down when not in use to save energy. This one speeds them up.
AMD's laptop are crap comparing to Intel's i5 armada... AMD doesn't give much attention to the laptop market...
Any word on whether thuban based quads can unlock to 5 core?
lets take an example of say FarCry 2 since its multi-core friendly. It sends threads to each core. All of the sudden the drivers for the CPU notice need to speed up the process. it kills 3/6 cores. Doesn't that automatically kill the engine's ability to send 6 threads and stop existing threads being processed by the shut down cores? I'd say performance in game would suffer due to this.
This is only when you need better single threaded performance. Obviously it's a 'smart' system and will activate based on the load headed towards the CPU. The engineers at AMD are not incapable doddering fools that are incapable of understanding how modern programs work. The fact is that many of the (common) programs we use now are only at most, double threaded.
Uber expensive but good Pentium M
Uber hot and inefficient Pentium 4M
Uber underpowered Celeron.
I'm glad to see Intel have made good progress when it comes to laptop CPU's.
I understand you recommend AMD for low budget systems but I don't quite see how this works. Budget AMD motherboards are more expensive than Intel, and while the chips are cheaper I am not convinced by the Price/performance ratio. I am going to try the Phenom dual core unlock to quad core routine but if there was not the possibility of this then I would not have even looked at AMD. As an indication of how things are my supplier is struggling to get hold of AMD chips because his wholesale supplier is just concentrating on volume Intel sales and not bothering with stocking much AMD stuff.
I hope I have not come across as an Intel fan boy wth this, I cannot however ignore the true situation.
Perhaps they can generate market share by going ultra budget, they would have to help by reducing motherboard chipset prices to make cheaper boards available.
Then again, most games thread particularly bad*.
Then, when gaming, you get a 500Mhz boost, while working you get all cores...
Not a bad Idea really.
*as in, using only 2 cores of a quad
Unfortunately AMD has done badly in the laptop market place due thier less efficient chips. I think being stuck with the current generation they can't improve it much more so are holding on for Llano (?codename?).