And what, do you think everyone wrote assembly for these other uarchs? They used compilers and used the same languages. But for good performance they had to write code differently at a high level. Making code highly parallelizable and amenable to different types of CPUs (or GPUs!) has more in common than you realize.
I definitely didn't say the majority of people that buy games have 8 threads. But why aren't they well utilized? Because not all software threads well and a lot that does is a very difficult undertaking with a lot of compromises. That's what I keep trying to say.
Yes, I absolutely believe the single threaded bottleneck in this scenario would be the most major problem.
I think you have a much different idea of what "market" means than I do. When I say market I mean what people WANT. You seem to think Apple created the iPhone market. I see it the other way around entirely - as far as I'm concerned, it's the market that encouraged Apple to create iPhone. That they got this way by realizing market trends and realizing what people would want.
They all hit close to the same limit over 100W. The only reason the newer CPUs have grown to fill up that same limit is because they have more cores.
Is that what you think I'm doing? If you don't understand how Pentium 4 convinced Intel that they needed to change their design philosophy then there's a lot you don't understand about the history of their CPU development...
These features require proper OS support, not that everyone starts writing completely different applications. I really don't see what you're getting at anyway. These power saving features have nothing to do with peak power consumption.
You're making several (more) strawman arguments here. But I'll start off with - no, I don't think that software will ever be threaded as much as possible. Or optimized as much as possible. That's outrageous. All software is limited by fixed schedules, budgets, and design targets - and past that it's limited by the skill of the people writing it.
But the argument has never really been about whether or not software will utilize threading as much as possible, it's been an argument about what "as much as possible" means. You seem to imply that most software can be lot more parallel than it is. Or, at the very least, you're saying that it could be the extent that justifies more cores. This is little more than a wild assumption on your part, an overly optimistic dream coming from someone who probably has no experience in making general purpose software more parallel. And the question has never been about whether or not you could use more cores, but whether or not they're worth their cost in die area.
You're blaming Intel for having poorer judgement than you claim, because they're not putting as many cores on devices as YOU think would be beneficial. When I say that the market dictates their decision, that doesn't mean that they're basing this merely on what exists now. You think that they don't evaluate potential? You think that they don't respond to where software development can go? They ARE moving along with changes in software - by making their vectors wider and more capable (AVX2) and by making their IGPs wider, more general purpose, and more tightly coupled. And guess what, they make these changes by evaluating the market and where they think it makes sense to move things.
AMD puts in more cores and they bet stronger on stuff like HSA, but it's not because they're more progressive/forward thinking than Intel, it's because they're playing in a different market. One called a niche, where it's better to be faster in 10% of software than more moderately slower in 100% of software. If they could do what Intel is doing they'd most likely have a different strategy.
What's really, REALLY puzzling is how you think Apple's products have ANYTHING to do with any of this. Intel has been putting more cores in server and enthusiast products only before iPhone. They have been focusing on increasing perf/W over increasing peak perf before iPhone. They've been working on a lower power (and cheaper) processor variant before iPhone. And somehow, somehow you think iPhone convinced Intel to not sell you a 6 core (but with no more single threaded performance..) CPU for $300 instead of $600. Please tell me how this works. Please tell me how you think developing SoC friendly processes has dictated how many cores they slap down on their high end mainstream parts.
I never mentioned i think intel should sell me X Cores @ Y Price.
(Well - i do want them to - but i do not see it as their problem for not servicing me).
Please stop putting words in my mouth.
Please stop calling stuff strawman that's not a strawman.
Your completely not responding to anything.
Your finally on to something about the skill of the people writing it.
You and i - have to believe in some way - market will train for what it sees fit for the future.
If the market demands more people who write managed code amass - it'll educate them.
(Hi Java and .NET!).
That also includes as a software engineer in a performance area - knows how to design and instruct his team to write code that threads well for any uARCH - IF an abundance of threads become availeble.
There's a fixed budget for every project sure - but how you dedicate that budget says all.
If you want a application capable of being responsive and handle different intensive workloads - and all you have is a 1,8 ghz willamette times 32.
You will find the time neccesary to make sure you can split up the design of the program into threaded que's as much as possible.
Run as much asynchronous tasks as possible - and piece everything together in order as needed.
But it's easy to write "acceptable" code when your ST performance on Haswell - is damn stellar.
I don't believe with x86 legacy and slow Instruction adoption rate - there will ever be a 50% jump from a gaming or modern day desktop workload ever - that's not somehow MT related.
(Short of graphene\carbon somehow allowing us to go beyond 5 ghz marks).
Now if you still haven't bloody figured this out - The apple references are tongue in cheek because they're the ones (that moved the market \ market moved with them depending on who you are) publicly help this movement alot.
Both in mainstream and more geek circles.
And even more so now that every apple fan knows CYCLONE IS MAD PANTS YO.