Page 1 of 2

An Overview of Intel's Teraflops Research Chip

Posted: Tue Feb 13, 2007 10:34 am
by Apoptosis
Over the weekend Intel announced that they were able to produce an 80-core processor that is able to do trillions of calculations per second. This would make it the World's first programmable processor to deliver Teraflops performance! How does this new research chip change the future of processors? Read on to find out!

Image

The board pictured above houses Intel’s 80-Core Teraflops Research Chip. Just ten years ago it took 10,000 Pentium Pro Processors to do the work that the 80-core processor above can do! What does the die of an 80-core processor look like?

Article Title: An Overview of Intel's Teraflops Research Chip
Article URL: http://www.legitreviews.com/article/460/1/

Posted: Tue Feb 13, 2007 12:22 pm
by Hybridesque
I wonder how their research will filter into consumer computing. Will be interesting to see what follows from the Core 2 Duo, because that was pretty epic.

Posted: Tue Feb 13, 2007 12:25 pm
by liqnit
I think this chip is only demo for future plan
no company will outdo it's current line so fast.
my guess will see such in either super computer in 2-3 years or in homes in 5yrs

Posted: Tue Feb 13, 2007 12:41 pm
by Apoptosis
liqnit wrote:I think this chip is only demo for future plan
no company will outdo it's current line so fast.
my guess will see such in either super computer in 2-3 years or in homes in 5yrs
Just curious, but did you read the article before posting this?

Posted: Tue Feb 13, 2007 2:08 pm
by liqnit
Apoptosis wrote:
liqnit wrote:I think this chip is only demo for future plan
no company will outdo it's current line so fast.
my guess will see such in either super computer in 2-3 years or in homes in 5yrs
Just curious, but did you read the article before posting this?
I did and .
my comment regard the lines in the end of the review that Intel is not releasing this chip because of technical (HW,SW) issues - my point was that Intel is not releasing because of the success it have with C2D.
and also i do believe that if AMD will show some very promising chip (Like Opteron in its time) intel will release such (80CORE) chip into the Super computer market

Posted: Tue Feb 13, 2007 2:22 pm
by kenc51
liqnit wrote:
Apoptosis wrote:
liqnit wrote:I think this chip is only demo for future plan
no company will outdo it's current line so fast.
my guess will see such in either super computer in 2-3 years or in homes in 5yrs
Just curious, but did you read the article before posting this?
I did and .
my comment regard the lines in the end of the review that Intel is not releasing this chip because of technical (HW,SW) issues - my point was that Intel is not releasing because of the success it have with C2D.
and also i do believe that if AMD will show some very promising chip (Like Opteron in its time) intel will release such (80CORE) chip into the Super computer market
Intel is not releasing it because there's no market for it!
This chip is not for the HPC super computer market either! They made it to learn from it! It was made by their research Dept!!! For research no less :roll:

Kudos to Intel for showing what they can do!
I'd like to see DAMITT do this.......... :finga:

Posted: Tue Feb 13, 2007 2:35 pm
by liqnit
Every chip start as research....
and after moves to production

Posted: Tue Feb 13, 2007 2:39 pm
by dgood
ha ha, my friend and I were talking after reading this article and thought if it ever came to production or to have a market which there is obviously no market for at the moment. by the time AMD caught up with Intel's 80 cores Intel would have a chip that bends space time to do calculations in more time but actually taking less or something ridiculous like that. Tell the research department for Intel to try that now.

Posted: Tue Feb 13, 2007 2:41 pm
by liqnit
the core race is just like MHZ race which INTEL stopped.
You need smarter CPU not larger...

Posted: Tue Feb 13, 2007 2:57 pm
by Gamble
Wow, the performance potential of that processor boggles my mind. I wonder if (and when) a market for something of this magnitude will develop. Think about how many Work Unit you could finish for Fold@Home with this bad boy.

Thanks for the article, that is going to earn me 5 extra-credit points in Computer Analysis. :) :) :)

Posted: Tue Feb 13, 2007 4:01 pm
by kenc51
liqnit wrote:the core race is just like MHZ race which INTEL stopped.
You need smarter CPU and larger...
And who's winning the core race? ;)

Posted: Tue Feb 13, 2007 4:21 pm
by T-Shirt
liqnit wrote:the core race is just like MHZ race which INTEL stopped.
You need smarter CPU and larger...
This is a step towards a smarter (faster) very large array computer, that uses a lot less power, and produces a lot less heat while completing more calculations (all any computer ever does)
As intel said now we need smarter programmers maybe using a new langauge to make use of this array (very close together distibuted computing :lol: )

Posted: Tue Feb 13, 2007 5:11 pm
by kenc51
This chip allows Intel test stuff like "Die Stacking", the new "network on a chip" design, performance per watt and much more stuff I don't understand (yet).

When they perfect their designs they will make it more advanced, and use x86-(64) cores. All this is for 8 & 16 + core designs. If you want to make something, simplify it and make it bigger. This way you can learn the basics quicker.

It uses the "VLIW architecture" (ie. like the Itanium, which relies on the compiler) because it's simpler! This doesn't mean they will still use this for their chips. They will proly stick with "EPIC architecture" which current x86 chip use, this means the cpu core prioritises instructions etc. instead of the complier.

coders out there, correct me if I'm wrong as I haven't coded anything bigger than "hello world" ;)

Posted: Tue Feb 13, 2007 5:17 pm
by HONkUS
ok when they say 100 million transistors are they talking per core or total?

100,000,000*80 = 8 Billion Transistors!!!!! :shock:

But

100,000,000/80 = 1.25 Million Transistors

Posted: Tue Feb 13, 2007 5:20 pm
by kenc51
HONkUS wrote:ok when they say 100 million transistors are they talking per core or total?

100,000,000*80 = 8 Billion Transistors!!!!! :shock:

But

100,000,000/80 = 1.25 Million Transistors
100M transistors on the whole chip! Far less than the current C2D CPU's!
Now you can see how "basic" the cores are!

Posted: Tue Feb 13, 2007 5:37 pm
by HONkUS
oh ok phew if it was 8 Billion transistors then holy jeebus DAAMIT might as well of called it quits prototype or not.

Posted: Wed Feb 14, 2007 1:07 am
by liqnit
i undersand the point in going simple & low power cores
but still - the idea of putting 100s or more core on single chip seems to me another race starting.
regarding "who won the MHZ race"
if you look at what Intel has has done it is return to the PIII and abandoned the PIV road.
less speed more brain...

Posted: Wed Feb 14, 2007 7:40 am
by ikjadoon
Even if did come to the market in 5 years, even 10 years, there wouldn't be a market for it because I think there are grand total of 2 games that are actually dual-core "enabled"...Quake and some other game..

Nice to see what Intel has been up to for the business community, though!

~Ibrahim~

Posted: Wed Feb 14, 2007 9:41 am
by liqnit
It will apply to whole new computing concept - not only games...

Posted: Wed Feb 14, 2007 3:33 pm
by ikjadoon
liqnit wrote:It will apply to whole new computing concept - not only games...
True, but I think it will be severely limited to ONLY business applications...

~Ibrahim~