Multi-Core
Ok this is a little techie but neat.
A multi core chip is a microprocessor that combines two or more independent processors into a single package, often a single integrated circuit (IC).
What's amazing is there's a rumor that Intel has designed a 80 core prototype. That's like sticking 80 Intel 3.0 Ghz processors into one machine but rather all on one chip. Can you imagine how fast you're MS word would work?!? Seriously, we all know what drives the hardware market to make newer faster and more powerful chips and lets face it, it isn't to drive your Outlook, Word or even photoshop. It's...
and this too
all of which is rendered real time which means, mechanically drawn from a series of billions of mathematically geometic calculations done each second and displayed at what should be at least 24 times per second. Which means the computer has to (this is really simple way to explain it):
- Grab a chunk of data into memory
- run the data through lots of geometric calculations, many have to do with triangles and a series of rules and complex linear algebra and calculas (most of the time involving real world physics)
- Interact with various hardware components on the machine.
- Draw the triangles on your screen to create a wire mesh which is turn are called Polygons. Image may look something like this:
- Fill in the gaps with textures (color, images, etc) that are single dimensional drawings to create what ulatimtly looks like a 3 dimensional object.
- Do this for every object in the viewable area.
This is all done cleared and redone at least 24 times each second (the human eye can't typically notice something rendered beyond 24 times a second (frames per second...most movies are recorded at this rate). This is where high powered processors come into play.
The graphics/gaming industry is one of the most profitable software industries in the world and drive hardware, period.
Chip manufactures like Intel, AMD, and IBM have run into a limitation with increasing clock speeds because of a physical limitation between the connections of the specific parts of the chips (buses). Think if it as the roads are getting too close together and there's just no more space to build roads since they're too close together. So why not just make a chip that acts like two! four! 80!