Multi processor boards have been around for awhile now but are more often never used by gamers because there are no games that will run two processors.
How about stacking two CPU cores on top of each and allow the two cores to share the processing load. When one core is busy, the data is routed to the other core.
I haven’t forgotten about the heat issues, either. Right now multiple companies are experimenting with micro-channel-liquid-cooling that would be incorporated within the CPU itself. If these micro channels were used along with external liquid-cooled heat sinks, this would easily work. For the OCing crowd, this could be good and bad. Very high speeds but the processors and the heat sink most likely would be almost one unit. I know of a few people that wouldn’t buy that unless the cooling was designed for over clocking.
Finally, the mother boards of today are to slow and laggy to fully appreciated the data rate this multi core processor would put out. But the new up coming PCI Express (full serial bus mother board) Architecture would have no problems at all. We’re talking about 2.5 – 10 Giga Transfers/second/direction.
Comments more then welcome-- Dino875, Jan 13 2004 PCI-Express http://www.intel.co...hatisPCIExpress.pdfDescription of PCI-Express Architecture [Dino875, Oct 04 2004] You say that multi processor boards aren't practical because there's not much software that can utilize it, then go on to suggest a multi-processor. That's all this is, nothing more. A single thread cannot split onto two processors. In order to take advantage of parallel processing, an application must be designed to run several parallel threads.
For example:
if your game runs everything in a linear fashion (gets player positions, gets inputs, runs AI algorithms, runs interference checks, runs polygon processing, feeds data to graphics card), then this will be useless.
If your game can take advantage of parallel processing (gets player positions and inputs in one thread, runs AI algorithms in another thread, runs interference checks and poly processing in another) then this is just standard parallel processing.
AFAIK, chipmakers are already planning on moving to multi-core processors. I believe that the introduction of Intel HT processors (hyperthreading) is an attempt to place the initial technology on the table, so that software producers will start coding for parallel threads.
Since there is a heat problem, and the pin area for the processor-board interface already takes up much more real estate than the processor, it makes more sense to put the cores side-by-side for better heat transfer than it does to stack them.-- Freefall, Jan 13 2004 I'll wait for the Diamond substrate CPUs. Heat - no problem. Speed - no problem.-- DarkVengeance, Jan 13 2004 random, halfbakery