dual core

[axeman_ukl]

something i'm not a 100% sure of :-

i know it has two cores but does one have to max out one in cpu power before the other fires up or do they both run at the same time sharing the work equally in the one program ?

or does one run one program only and the other is there if you boot up another program ?

also 64 bit means you can use more memory is this (if say you have 4gig of memory that sonar would be able to use it all or would the memory be divided equally between the cores 2gig for core 1 2gig for core 2 )



hope somebody can shed some light on this

[RawDryHole]

Dual core processors are still actually one chip. Actually that's part of their advantage: they take up less space than actually having multiple chips. Dual core processor do offer thread-level parallelism (the ability to process tasks simultaneously), but this only applies to applications and systems which are designed to take advantage of this capability, but many do.

In short, both cores function at the same time and pool resources (such as RAM)...both good and bad (same bus). In many instances single core processors have been found to be more efficient than dual core processor.

Hope this helps!

[dirtyp]

to keep it simple one procceses data while the other waits for the next task. There both actualy running ht works the same way almost like a cache.

[wheelema]

Actually, I have no idea. But as a former programmer I can offer up some misdirection.

Either the application or the OS must be specifically coded to exploit multiple cores. The largest multi-core platform I worked on was a 16 processor AS/400 (you don't want to know). On that platform the OS acted as the traffic cop. We never had to worry about it. When you are discussing Mac or PC platforms I believe that you see a benefit only with the later OS releases unless the application you are using has been coded to exploit multi-core platforms.

Most have not.

This has been borne out by numerous benchmark tests that report no performance improvement unless the application has been coded to exploit the feature (if available). I believe that the latest releases of Mac OS and WinXP Pro 64 address this deficiency.

But once again, I don't know for sure.

[axeman_ukl]

so if i had sonar 6 and 64 bit xp then it would use both cores and all of the 4 gig of memory

where as my sonar 4 and xp home do not use both cores at the same time and only 2 gig of my 4 gig memory