Intel Shows 48-Core x86 Processor

Vigile writes "Intel unveiled a completely new processor design today the company is dubbing the 'Single-chip Cloud Computer' (but was previously codenamed Bangalore). Justin Rattner, the company's CTO, discussed the new product at a press event in Santa Clara and revealed some interesting information about the goals and design of the new CPU. While terascale processing has been discussed for some time, this new CPU is the first to integrate full IA x86 cores rather than simple floating point units. The 48 cores are set 2 to a 'tile' and each tile communicates with others via a 2D mesh network capable of 256 GB/s rather than a large cache structure. "

Comments

Re:Code Name is Offensive

[eln]

It was called Bangalore to remind you where to call if you need any support for it.

Yet another cloud?

[Mortiss]

Why is everything called cloud these days? Yet another du jour buzzword. Is this really justified here?

Re:Yet another cloud?

[hibiki_r]

When it comes to marketing cliches, when it rains, it pours.

Idle benchmarks

[Colin Smith]

With 48 processors you can have your system 98% idle running your typical application at full speed rather than just 50% or 75% idle as is the norm now.
 

Re:Advantages over just adding more FPUs?

[Yaztromo]

Can someone elaborate on why you'd want 48 full processors, rather than a processor with two (dual) or four (quad) "cores" (I'm presuming core in this case == FPU in the article).

Bad assumption. In this case, we're talking about (what you would consider) a 48 core CPU. Previous designs would have apparently contained only a small number of full processing cores, and a large number of parallel units suitable only for floating point calculations (which can be great for various types of scientific calculations and simulations). This new design contains 48 discrete IA x86 cores.

Seems like the type of processor Grand Central Dispatch was designed for.

Yaz.