Rink,
While on subject of QC, Socket F and need for additional bandwidth (and use of pins to do so). A random thought occured to me that would make a lot more sense than doubling the width, and it would improve performance greatly as well.
I think AMD should add 4th HT link, and maintain the same width.
Consider a 4 way system, where 2 links are used to other processors, 1 for I/O. Now compare it with a system where 1 link is used for I/O, and 3 links to attach to other 3 processors.
The advantages are as follows (assuming the speed of the link is the same):
1. Interprocessor communication bandwidth goes up by 50% - from 2 to 3 links
3. The amount of trafic goes down by 25%. Wheras to send 1 pocket to each of the 3 processors cost 4 segment worth of traffic (2 x 1 hop, 1 x 2 hop), with 3 links it is only 3 (3 x 1 hop)
3. Latency is reduced to 1 hop
The increase of pins needed by HT is 33%, but the benefit is far exceeding 33%
Similar benefits would occur in systems extending 4 sockets (although I think the volume of those will go down from low to very low when QC become available).
Joe
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