AMD promises 16-core threading by 2012

AN AMD panellist here in Vegas thinks that it will reach sixteen cores software programming within five years. This will be in time for the Playstation 4, the new Xbox and Geforce G2012 or Radeon whaetever they will want to call it.

The next move for 2007 is to get to software quad core optimised. After that, it will go exponential and move to sixteen cores. Software should be threaded to exploit sixteen cores in the next five years, the AMD spinner spun.

Intel didn't talk about any future plans apart from software stuff where the games need to get better and use hardware more efficiently.

But heavy multi-threading is the future for both DAAMIT, and Intel. In fact, even Nvidia agrees, for once. They'll argue about the number of cores and the time-frame, but they're barking up the same tree.

Megahurtz don't matter - now it's all about the number of cores. µ