Intel Corp (INTC)

[Elmer Phud]

ChipGeek

There is nothing inherently better about a shared L2 cache versus a separate L2 cache for each core. It's simply a tradeoff between optimizing for multi-core operation versus single-core. A shared L2 cache will allow any single-core application to have more cache available, thus increasing performance. Now consider that Intel's manufacturing advantage allows it to have a shared cache that is almost as big as AMD's 4 separate caches combined, and I'd say Intel is sitting pretty here.

What about snooping? Wouldn't a shared cache be an advantage here?