The14thGOD wrote: the operating speed on the amd one says 2.0, is that both togeather, or each one runs at that?
Since there's only one chip involved (see below), the clock rate of the device on the silicon is 2.0GHz. So the answer to your question is yes.
Processor speeds are never strictly additive in any case, even in traditional SMP setups.
The14thGOD wrote:and how does dual core work?
Dual core is basically the same as SMP (
simultaneous
multiple
processing), except the multiple processors are located on the same physical piece of silicon. It's also referred to as multiple-chip-on-die, which is both longer and less accurate, but probably easier for people to understand.
Since the dawn of the personal computing era, the "processor" and "processor chip" have been interchangeable ideas, even though one is just an implanted IC design and the other is a finished device with a nice cover and several hundred pins on the bottom. Dual core is a fundamental change to this; as the name implies, there are now two or more microprocessor cores sitting on the piece of silicon built into the chip.
This does not make the dual-core chip twice as powerful as a chip that only includes one microprocessor core. But it does make it more powerful than conventional SMP setups, for the same reason that a setup using a processor with more cache and less RAM will outperform a setup using an identically clocked processor with less cache and more RAM. Data that is on silicon, on the chip, is much faster to access than data that needs to be sent from one SMP chip to another over some kind of interconnect. There are a whole host of processor and compiler design questions and headaches that arise from dual-core (shared cache -- a good or bad idea? discuss); some of them are the same as problems in SMP and some are new, but things are definitely happening much faster.
As far as actual internal operations, I'm not on quite as solid footing. DW may show up and explain as much of AMD's design internals as he's allowed to on a public forum, or trythil may come in and correct/expand what I've written. I'm not an expert on processor design, I just maintain the machines that make these things.
hth,
--K
