Are Two Chips Really Better Than One?

Is now the time to get the hottest new tech?
Take the poll; get the answers.

by Rick Telberg
At Large

Tomorrow is Election Day. But the PC we’re talking about today isn’t “politically correct.” It’s “personal computer.”

Perhaps you have seen the new ads from Intel, “Multiply Yourself,” touting the new Core Duo processors. AMD also has its own dual-core CPUs and the stakes are going further up. Intel announced at its semi-annual developer’s forum the upcoming quad-core processor, which will start shipping in volume toward the end of this year or beginning of next.

What are these new processors; are they better than the “old” single core CPUs and why should accountants care?While Intel and AMD have taken slightly different approaches, a dual-core CPU puts two complete processor chips onto a single die, or piece of silicon. This is similar to having two distinct processors or CPUs in your PC or laptop, something that higher-end servers have utilized for years.

Actually, in many ways a dual-core processor is better than having two discrete CPUs, as the two processors can communicate with each other faster, residing on the same piece of silicon, and a dual-core processor draws a lot less power than two separate processors.

Whether a dual or quad-core CPU is better than a single processor chip is not easy to answer. Having two processors means that two applications can be run simultaneously, providing true multiprocessing rather than switching back and forth between applications very rapidly, which is done with a single CPU. Some applications can actually split tasks between multiple CPUs, speeding up the application considerably. At the moment, the applications that can do this are primarily video and graphics processing tasks.

Where a dual-core (or more) CPU does provide some processing benefits is when you are doing two processor-intensive tasks at the same time, such as batch processing tax returns in the background, while running a large spreadsheet in the foreground. If Windows correctly distributes the tasks to separate CPUs, both applications should run well, rather than having the entire PC bog down.

To some extent, it really doesn’t matter. Multiple core CPUs are the future — Intel and AMD have made a large R&D investment, and the fabrication plants that produce the CPUs are being converted for multiple core production. At some point, single core processors will be used only for specialized tasks, such as the embedded computers in cars and other devices.

To gain a significant performance boost, both the operating system (Windows) and the individual applications have to be reworked to take advantage of the additional capabilities of multiple-core CPUs. Windows does already, at least to some extent, as the previous generation of Pentium 4 processors have contained a feature called Hyper-Threading, which lets multiple computations and processors take place simultaneously within a single CPU.

But applications that accountants use the most have not been updated to take advantage of improvements in PC hardware. At some point they will be, but that’s in the future.

So, for many accountants, it makes sense to wait until after tax season to replace their CPUs. Although it’s probably a good time to consider performance-enhancing peripherals, like dual monitors. And it’s always a good time to make sure your backup and recovery system is idiot-proof.

Until then, for many accountants two or more cores are only marginally better than one. Still, given the small incremental cost of a dual-core based PC over one with a single-core CPU, it pays to spend the small premium to be ready when true multiprocessing, rather than multitasking, becomes de rigueur.

[First published by the AICPA]

Posted on November 5, 2006