Intel Duo Processor, Multithreaded Programming Tutorial: The Intel Core™ Duo processor is the first mobile processor to implement Chip Multi-Processing (CMP), also known as dual core-on-die. This first implementation was carefully chosen to deliver maximum performance for a given power. The performance improvement was achieved by enhancing the single-core micro-architecture, which results in better single-threaded performance, and by implementing CMP, which improves the performance of multi-threaded applications and parallel application processing.

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The Intel Core™ Duo processor is the first mobile processor to implement Chip Multi-Processing (CMP), also known as dual core-on-die. This first implementation was carefully chosen to deliver maximum performance for a given power. The performance improvement was achieved by enhancing the single-core micro-architecture, which results in better single-threaded performance, and by implementing CMP, which improves the performance of multi-threaded applications and parallel application processing. The focus of this paper is to introduce the reader to the CMP aspects of the Intel Core Duo processor. Since the Intel Core Duo processor was designed to be a mobile processor, we examine in detail the design considerations that had to be taken into account to achieve a balance between performance improvements and power savings, and we provide recommendations on optimizing the code developed for the Intel Core Duo processor so that future applications can take full advantage of the new design.

INTRODUCTION

The Intel Core Duo processor is the first mobile core to implement Core Multi-Processor (CMP) technology on one die. The implementation was carefully chosen to maximize performance, so it can be used as a general- purpose processor, and to minimize power consumption, in order to extend the battery life and have it fit in a large variety of thermal envelopes. The performance improvement was achieved by enhancing the micro- architecture, based on Pentium® M processor-based technology, of the single core, and by combining dual cores on the same die. In order to achieve the power consumption goal, we examined each micro architectural can be found in this special issue of the Intel Technology Journal [1]. This paper focuses on the multi-core design and performance aspects of the processor, but for each of the decisions we describe here, we discuss how the power and thermal aspects were taken into account as part of our decision.

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