What happens to computers with 2 CPUs?

Back in the days of dual-CPU computers, many people probably remember systems equipped with two Intel Pentium III processors thanks to dual-socket motherboards. At that time, these systems were quite expensive and only available to technology enthusiasts.

Systems using 2 CPUs are popular today as servers.

Nowadays, owning a computer with 2 CPUs is becoming obsolete. So why is this technology disappearing from the market? Let's find out.

The Age of Computers with Multi-Core CPUs

To understand, we need to know that the Intel Pentium III, although powerful, only has one core, which limits its multitasking capabilities. Before the advent of multithreading technology, dual CPUs were a temporary solution, leading to the emergence of some software solutions.

Symmetric Multiprocessing (SMP) allowed two Pentium III CPUs to share memory and execute threads in parallel, but only specially designed applications could really take advantage of this. Operating systems such as Windows NT and Linux supported the distribution of processes across two CPUs, but the performance improvement was negligible for single programs.

Nowadays, computers with two CPUs have become unnecessary. Although there are still servers that support multiple Intel Core Xeon CPUs, consumer computers no longer use this configuration. This is mainly related to memory bandwidth.

Modern CPUs today have multiple cores and are more than enough for the needs of users.

Mission-critical servers often have two CPUs, each with its own memory controller, which optimizes performance for critical tasks like virtualization and large-scale databases. However, this is no longer important for the average user.

In fact, today's consumer CPUs have more cores and threads than ever before, making dual-CPU computers irrelevant. There's no real benefit to owning a dual-CPU computer for the average user. If you want to experiment with dual-CPU systems, you can find used servers with dual Xeon processors, but it's not easy to use them to their full potential.

Finally, the world is past the days when dual CPU computers were necessary for intensive tasks. Technological advancements have given users more efficient options without having to invest in such old and power-hungry systems.

Source: https://thanhnien.vn/dieu-gi-xay-ra-voi-nhung-chiec-may-tinh-co-2-cpu-185241127153031061.htm