Intel Announces 80-core, 1-teraflop processor

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Blitersety

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The chip has 80 cores and is capable of 1 trillion calculations per second, or one teraflop. From http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/6354225.stm:

A chip with 80 processing cores and capable of more than a trillion calculations per second (teraflop) has been unveiled by Intel.

The Teraflop chip is not a commercial release but could point the way to more powerful processors, said the firm.

The chip achieves performance on a piece of silicon no bigger than a fingernail that 11 years ago required a machine with 10,000 chips inside it.

The challenge is to find a way to program the many cores simultaneously.

Current desktop machines have up to four separate cores, while the Cell processor inside the PlayStation 3 has eight (seven of them useable). Each core is effectively a programmable chip in its own right.

But to take advantage of the extra processing power, programmers need to gives instructions to each core that work in parallel with one another.

There are already specialist chips with multiple cores - such as those used in router hardware and graphics cards - but Dr Mark Bull, at the Edinburgh Parallel Computing Centre, said multi-core chips were forcing a sea-change in the programming of desktop applications.

"It's not too difficult to find two or four independent things you can do concurrently, finding 80 or more things is more difficult, especially for desktop applications.

"It is going to require quite a revolution in software programming.

"Massive parallelism has been the preserve of the minority - a few people doing high-performance scientific computing.

"But that sort of thing is going to have to find its way into the mainstream."

The first time teraflop performance was achieved was 11 years on the ASCI Red Supercomputer built by Intel for the Sandia National Laboratory.

That machine took up more than 2,000 square feet, was powered by almost 10,000 Pentium Pro processors, and consumed more than 500 kilowatts of electricity.

"Our researchers have achieved a wonderful and key milestone in terms of being able to drive multi-core and parallel computing performance forward," said Justin Rattner, Intel Senior Fellow and chief technology officer.

"It points the way to the near future when teraflops-capable designs will be commonplace and reshape what we can all expect from our computers and the internet at home and in the office."

The Teraflop chip uses less electricity than many current high-end processors, making the design attractive for use in home computers.

It consumes 62 watts, and the cores can power on and off independently, making it more energy efficient.

Intel says that commercial spin-offs of the chip could see it being used in high-definition entertainment PCs, servers and handheld devices.

Possible uses include artificial intelligence, instant video communications, photo-realistic games and real-time speech recognition, said the firm.

I wonder how much that one costs? lol.
 
LOL.....if they ever get that thing to actually work properly....and multi-threading is implemented in everything...thats going to revolutionize computers. But currently I can't see anything like that ever being sold commercially for quite some time.
 
I think it would be neat to see someone design a super computer around this chip; I bet it would out perform the current fastest super computer exponentially.
 
Yea thats what they're looking for em for, a super computer with that chip in it.....you could get a lot of **** done with that.
 
gee-wilickers batman.

you could map the universe, calculate orbitals, and decypher electromagnetic waves from all the supernovas known to man, in mili-seconds!
 
This chip would of course never be made available commercially, well maybe in 25 years when *****es like these are common but for now they're just super computer chips, quite big'uns.
 
Yeah, this isn't a commercial version. This is a big leap though. I will say 5 years and we will have something like this in our home.

Also to note - I think all companies should say how many process per second the CPU does not just the clock speed. Many adv consumers don't know that clock speeds doesn't alway means a better computer. If it was put in process per second then it would help everyone out.
 
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