Sandia Says More Cores is not Always Better
Years ago, the hallmark of processor performance was clock speed. As chipmakers hit the wall on how far they could push clock speeds processor designs started to go to multiple cores to increase performance. However, as many users can tell you performance doesn't always increase the more cores you add to a system.
Benchmarkers know that a quad core processor often offers less performance than a similarly clocked dual-core processor for some uses. The reason for this phenomenon according to Sandia is one of memory availability. Supercomputers have tried to increase performance by moving to multiple core processors, just as the world of consumer processors has done.
The Sandia team has found that simply increasing the number of cores in a processor doesn't always improve performance, and at a point the performance actually decreases. Sandia simulations have shown that moving from dual core to four core processors offers a significant increase in performance. However, the team has found that moving from four cores to eight cores offers an insignificant performance gain. When you move from eight cores to 16 cores, the performance actually drops.
