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Intel’s six- and eight-core processors are the fastest chips that consumers can get their hands on. But if you are among the research elite, the company has a new experimental chip that can offer nearly 20 times the computing power.

Intel showed an 48-core processor nicknamed the “single-chip cloud computer” that consumes about the same power as desktop processors available currently. The fully programmable 48 processing cores are the most Intel has ever had on a single silicon chip, says the company.

“This is a high core count processor that focuses on efficient energy consumption,” says Justin Rattner, chief technology officer of Intel. “It also maintains the compatibility and familiarity that people have with Intel architecture.”

The chip can operate on as little as 25 watts- or at 125 watts when running at maximum performance – same as the energy consumption of two household light bulbs, says Intel.

The 48-core processor, created using 45-nanometer technology, won’t be available in desktops for at least a few years. Instead, about 100 or more of the experimental chips will be provided for hands-on research in developing new software applications and programming models to select partners.

As chipmakers try to build more powerful processors, they have been packing more cores into a single chip. Last year, Intel showed a prototype of a 80-core processor. Earlier this year, Tilera, a startup spun out of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, promised a 100-core processor. The processor would be fabricated using 40-nanometer technology and available early next year, said Tilera.

Intel’s 48-core processor has some advantages over its rivals. It can run standard programs designed for Intel’s x86 architecture and developers can use the same kind of programming tools that they use for processors with fewer cores available currently. Compare to high-performance GPU computing arrays that require programmers to learn new techniques and development environments.

“This is an array of general purpose cores, which is quite a bit different from how the GPU guys do it,” says Rattner. “Our 48-core processor will run standard software.”

See Also:

• New Processor Will Feature 100 Cores
• 64 Core Chips Already Here: $435
• Why You’re Not Getting Your Money’s Worth Out of That New CPU
• Intel Defends Practicality of 80-Core Chip

Photo: Intel’s 48-core processor/Intel

Immediate obsolescence is an age old problem in the computer industry, but it doesn’t look like the upcoming Core i9 “Gulftown” processor is going to do anything to solve it. Word is from early benchmarks of the upcoming Intel processor is that it bests the current Core i7 at the top of the heap with speed gains as large as 50% — directly in line with its addition of two cores on top of the Core i7’s existing four. Of course, six 2.8GHz cores aren’t quite as exponentially helpful when applied to non-optimized tasks, but with most major modern software development aimed at better utilizing multiple cores, the core overkill of Core i9 will likely prove increasingly useful over time. At the start, however, Core i9’s improvements will come at a premium: 130W power consumption instead of 95W in Core i7, and of course a high-end only price tag to match. Word is we’ll be seeing these chips hit the market in early 2010, possibly as soon as January.

Early Core i9 benchmarks promising, make you wonder why you even bothered with Core i7 originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 24 Nov 2009 01:24:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Thirty-three years after the first Cray-1 supercomputer, the company is still cranking them out. Now the Cray XT5 “Jaguar” just won the title of world’s fastest computer, displacing the IBM Roadrunner that held the title for the previous 18 months, InformationWeek reports.

The Jaguar features six-core AMD Opteron processors, nearly a quarter million total CPU cores, and managed to hit 1.75 petaflops per second on the Linpack benchmark used by researchers in determining the biannual Top500 list. That’s compared with the Roadrunner’s 1.04 petaflop/s rating. (A petaflop/s is one quadrillion calculations per second.)

Of the top 500 machines in the list, 399 use Intel processors, 52 employ IBM Power chips, and AMD brings up third place in popularity with 42 systems. HP and IBM together account for building almost 400 of the 500 computers. Anyone for Crysis benchmarks?

Intel sure sells a lot of chips, but man — it sure blows a lot of that profit on lawyers. Just months after it got nailed with a $1.45 billion fine from the EU in an AMD antitrust case, nearly two years after AMD hit Intel with another antitrust probe and nearly 1.5 years after the FTC sparked up an investigation of its own, Intel has finally decided to pony up in order to rid itself of one of those back-riding monkeys. In an admittedly brief joint announcement released simultaneously by both firms today, Intel has agreed to cough up a whopping $1.25 billion in order to settle “all antitrust and IP disputes” with AMD. In fact, the pair went so far as to say the following:

“While the relationship between the two companies has been difficult in the past, this agreement ends the legal disputes and enables the companies to focus all of our efforts on product innovation and development.”

Aside from AMD’s coffers filling up with cash, the agreement also gives both firms patent rights from a new 5-year cross license agreement. Of course, we’re betting that this isn’t the end of this exceptionally bitter rivalry, and we highly doubt Intel wrote a check this large while grinning from ear-to-ear. That said, we’re eager to see what AMD does with its newfound cheddar, and if we had our druthers, we’d sit back and watch it invest heavily into beating Intel to the punch with its next few platforms.

Filed under: Desktops, Laptops

Intel shells out $1.25 billion to settle all AMD litigation originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 12 Nov 2009 10:38:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Who’s up for some more Intel roadmap rumoring? The latest scuttlebutt from “notebook players” over in the far East is that the chip giant has finally settled on names, speeds, and prices for its first three Arrandale CPUs, which are expected to arrive in the first half of 2010. The Core i5-520UM and Core i7-620UM both run at 1.06GHz, while the top Core i7-640UM model speeds ahead at 1.2GHz, with bulk-buying prices of $241, $278, and $305 per unit of each processor. Even if the processing speeds might not impress on paper, these 32nm chips splice two processing cores, the memory controller, and graphics engine all into the same package and thereby deliver major power savings. Platform pricing is expected to remain at around $500 for netbooks, while the ultrathins these chips are intended for should hit the $600 to $800 range… if Lord Intel wills it so.

Filed under: Laptops

Intel Arrandale chips detailed, priced and dated? originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 12 Nov 2009 09:38:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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