Intel Advances Tera-scale Computing With 80-Core Chip

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Intel Corporation researchers have developed the worlds first programmable processor that delivers supercomputer-like performance from a single, 80-core chip not much larger than the size of a fingernail while using less electricity than most of todays home appliances. This is the result of the companys innovative Tera-scale computing research aimed at delivering Teraflops — or trillions of calculations per second –performance for future PCs and servers. Technical details of the Teraflops research chip will be presented at the annual Integrated Solid State Circuits Conference (ISSCC) this week in San Francisco.

Intel has no plans to bring this exact chip designed with floating point cores to market. However, the companys Tera-scale research is instrumental in investigating new innovations in individual or specialized processor or core functions, the types of chip-to-chip and chip-to-computer interconnects required to best move data and, most importantly, how software will need to be designed to best leverage multiple processor cores. This Teraflops research chip offered specific insights in new silicon design methodologies, high-bandwidth interconnects and energy management approaches. 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.

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