‘Two brained’ chips to boost PC performance

April 19, 2005 | Source: NewScientist.com News

Intel’s new dual-core microprocessors perform calculations using twin processing cores that sidestep the problems created by shrinking components.

Shrinking chips to the next landmark, 65 nanometers, introduces quantum effects that can cause the circuit to malfunction. Operating the circuit at higher power can overcome this effect, but can cause overheating.

Dual-core processors offer a way around this problem, by splitting calculations between separate execution cores. And Intel’s Hyper-Threading technology allows each core to carry out two operations simultaneously. This means a dual-core processor can process four software threads simultaneously.