More cores
Igor
Chipmaker Intel has been showing off a fully programmable
48-core processor which it thinks will pave the way for massive data computers
powerful enough to do more of what humans can.
The single-chip cloud computer is successor generation to
the 80-core "Polaris" processor that sprang from Intel's Tera-scale
research project in 2007. Armed with 1.3-billion transistors it can run standard
x86 software and are basically low powered cores that gain power by
collectively working together. The SCC is basically a a high-speed "mesh"
network that lets each of the 48 cores communicate with others or with the four linked
memory controllers. While the Tera-scale chip used something similar, the SCC
uses a third of the power and is accelerated with built-in hardware
instructions for minimum communication delays.
Intel Chief Technology Officer Justin Rattner believes
the beast can do a lot of things. He hopes to create a machine will be capable
of understanding the world around them much as humans.
“They will see and hear and probably speak and do a
number of other things that resemble human-like capabilities, and will demand
as a result very powerful computing capability," he claimed.
Dreams of Frankenstein's monster apart, certainly the SCC
will shake up the server world. It will be possible to replace a rack of gear
with one SCC. Intel plans to share 100 SCC-based systems with various
partners in industry and academia.