Intel Presented An 80 Core CPU

[Mr. Popo]

Intel last week demonstrated a working processor with 80 individual processing cores. Each core, or "tile" as Intel calls them, consists of a compute element and a router that allows each tile to connect to its neighbor. The chip can deliver more than 1 trillion floating point operations per second (teraflops), depending on how fast it's running. This is only a research project right now, as there are a lot of challenges involved in making an 80-core chip that's a practical option for PCs and servers.

Intel demonstrated the teraflop research chip in a briefing for reporters last week at a San Francisco hotel. It built a special cooling system for the chip and ran a few applications to demonstrate its performance. Intel had the chip running at around 3GHz during the demonstration, but has gotten it to run faster in its Oregon labs with a water-cooled system, said CTO Justin Rattner.

This is how Intel demonstrated the chip for reporters. Several power supplies were required, and Intel also needed to build a special motherboard. Engineers showed how Intel can obtain different levels of performance by tweaking the chips' clock speed and voltage supply while running an application that solved complex mathematical equations.

Source

Vara says the 80-core chip uses less than 100 watts of energy; a dual-core chip uses 60 to 70 watts and a quad-core uses 105 to 130 watts. Of course the numbers for the 80-core chip could be affected by the fact that it's lacking some functionality, but Rob Enderle, president and principal analyst of the Enderle Group, says it's still a significant accomplishment.

"We're quite literally creating a network mesh to let each little core communicate with the other cores and the rest of the system," says Vara. "The cores will want to know what the other cores will doing so they don't fight."

While it may take five to eight years to come out with a working 80-core chip, Vara says IT managers might start watching for what he calls "different flavors" of quad-core chips. "Maybe you'll have interim chips where they have more complex cores along with simpler cores, too."

Source

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[ai_01]

ill take it if its cheap =P socket looks reaallyy cool thou

 

[FragTek]

Holy back to the future batman!

"No, no, no. This sucker's electrical, but I need a nuclear reaction to generate the 1.21 gigawatts of electricity I need."

Looks applicable to running this proccy, haha. More powerful than a flux capacitor? Maybe.

 

[Mr. Popo]

Holy back to the future batman!

"No, no, no. This sucker's electrical, but I need a nuclear reaction to generate the 1.21 gigawatts of electricity I need."

Looks applicable to running this proccy, haha. More powerful than a flux capacitor? Maybe.

...

Vara says the 80-core chip uses less than 100 watts of energy

 

[ionicle]

that just looks insane, i want one, imagine the folding power in that baby!

 

[FragTek]

...

I was judging my assumption on the 80 million power cables they have running to the mobo

 

[PP Mguire]

Not to mention the fact that they needed to create their own power unit to run it. If it cant run on regular PSUs whats the point.

 

[mVp24]

Not to mention the fact that they needed to create their own power unit to run it. If it cant run on regular PSUs whats the point.

Quad core is barely being used right now, I doubt they plan on launching an 80 core processor anytime soon, that is if they even launch it.

 

[PP Mguire]

Quad core is barely being used right now, I doubt they plan on launching an 80 core processor anytime soon, that is if they even launch it.

For the quad core part ive been saying that for a while, and people dissagree. Probably cause i say its pointless, but instead of trying to cram more cores into one socket why dont they improve upon the technology they have now? 4 cores is rediculous, but 80 is just stupid insane. They should make an even better uber pwnage Core 2 quad or duo instead of a (in this case) lame 80 core.

 

[FragTek]

Not to mention the fact that they needed to create their own power unit to run it. If it cant run on regular PSUs whats the point.

Well Intel obviously rushed the mobo here as you can see there are no VRM's, PWM's, or anything on the board so the ~100 amps that it requires to run on have to be fed directly from the PSU (In other words the power supply is doing a lot of the mobos job). They just didn't want to invest the time to create a conventional working motherboard, rather use a super high end power supply they had sitting in the broom closet

 

[Nagaru]

For the quad core part ive been saying that for a while, and people dissagree. Probably cause i say its pointless, but instead of trying to cram more cores into one socket why dont they improve upon the technology they have now? 4 cores is rediculous, but 80 is just stupid insane. They should make an even better uber pwnage Core 2 quad or duo instead of a (in this case) lame 80 core.

Many people will agree with you about 4 cores not being needed for most desktop applications, me included. 80 cores is not ridiculous for a rendering farm for a movie studio or other supercomputing applications. I think when things like this come along we should have a more open view and not say hey this isn't for us because one day it will filter down and be useful for a desktop, I just hope I never see that day.

 

[llwyd]

They should use it to run 80 F@H clients. Other than that I can't see it being ised for anything for a good while.

 

[FragTek]

Also keep in mind that these are "simple" cores, not the types of cores found in today current multi-cores. The combined transistor count in this 80 core proc is on par with the transistor count of a single core P4. Intel is merely demonstrating that they can get 80 cores to work in unison on a single die.

 

[Mr. Smith]

Damn. I found this article just before lunch, was going to post it when I got back and Mr. Popo has beaten me to it lol.

 

[Mr. Popo]

Damn. I found this article just before lunch, was going to post it when I got back and Mr. Popo has beaten me to it lol.

:0wned:

 

[equk]

Looks amazing.

It's funny how people are putting it down/faulting it already it's a test system in the intel lab's so it's work in progress.

It's not as if they've showcased it as being released next week or anything

 

[Rastalovich]

While it may take five to eight years to come out with a working 80-core chip

I thought it looked like an old cpu test board.

Library photos.

Many people will agree with you about 4 cores not being needed for most desktop applications, me included. 80 cores is not ridiculous for a rendering farm for a movie studio or other supercomputing applications. I think when things like this come along we should have a more open view and not say hey this isn't for us because one day it will filter down and be useful for a desktop, I just hope I never see that day.

I`d say that they are needed, but they also need to explain to programmers how they work.

 

[FarFarAway]

This CPu is severely lacking in most of the functionality of most x86 chips so it's not even close to retail at all. Pretty cool, but not sure this is the way the industry should be moving...we already have multi-pipelines GPU's...

 

[PP Mguire]

Many people will agree with you about 4 cores not being needed for most desktop applications, me included. 80 cores is not ridiculous for a rendering farm for a movie studio or other supercomputing applications. I think when things like this come along we should have a more open view and not say hey this isn't for us because one day it will filter down and be useful for a desktop, I just hope I never see that day.

Many people (not neccesarily in this case) disagree with me on the quad part and dont even read the last part. Its just i think they should work out the bugs in current hardware instead of making things most people wont even use for god knows how long. Like making current boards and processors uber pwnage so that way we dont need a new bios or update to make everything just a LITTLE more smoother. Hopefully thats what AMD is doing right now :/