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

48 is sufficient for most Ph.D. dissertations.

[reporter]

A big market for this chip is the computer-science department of 2nd-tier universities like the University of California-Santa Barbara (UCSB).

Unlike Stanford University, UCSB lacks the money to build a full-blown multiprocessor system. If UCSB had such a system back in the 1990s, then UCSB would likely have produced as much multiprocessor research as Stanford University.

This 48-core processor chip, due to the fact that it will eventually be a commercial product mass-produced by the millions of units, will be economically cheap. This chip will enable UCSB to build or buy a cheap multiprocessor system.

A bunch of graduate students is already salivating at the prospect. They are drooling.