Q: I’m very confused about dual core processors. There’s dual core and Core 2 duo and Core, etc. How can I make sense of all of this? What is a core?
The Core line of CPUs is either one of the greatest blunders or greatest anti-competition smokescreens it’s ever mustered. I don’t believe that I can think of any marketing move that will confuse, or has confused, consumers more so than Intel choosing the name Core as the next line of Desktop and Laptop processors. First, the difference between a core and Core must be explained. A core is very different than Core (note capitalization). A core is the thinking part of a processor (CPU) whereas a Core processor is the CPU line that came after Pentium. Just like the Pentium, Core has numbers that follow it. Right now there’s only Core and Core 2. I imagine that the future holds a Core 3 and Core 4 too, just like Pentium I, II, III, and IV. This naming convention has absolutely nothing to do with the number of cores in the CPU. To learn how many cores are in a Core CPU, you have to look at the third word in the name of the CPU, which contains the Italian/Romanesque numbering such as Solo, Duo, and Quad. Solo for one, Duo for two, Quad for four. There exists both a Core 2 Duo and a Core 2 Quad. In each case, Core 2 represents the processor line while the Duo/Quad represents the number of cores in that processor.
A core, as stated above, is the thinking part of the CPU. It performs the various calculations required to execute instructions that it’s given. CPUs are often compared to the human brain. Like brains, they have areas for short term and long term memory and also logical thinking. These translate to the registers, cache, and core respectively. A dual core CPU is the equivalent to a human brain with the ability to conduct two things at once. Imagine a person writing out a calculus problem with their left hand, a physics problem with their right hand, and being able to focus on each at all times. Four cores is just like the above, but now the feet are also doing math! There is a common misunderstanding that double or quadrupling the number of cores will double and quadruple the performance. This isn’t quite true because there is some overhead involved.
In summary, the Core line of processors have one, two, four, and more cores. Like the Pentium, they will undergo a number of numeric releases. A core is the thinking part of the CPU.
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