Intel Announces 50+ Core Chip, Foresees Exascale Computing
Intel is set to update its supercomputers with the 50+ core Knights Corner processor, which was previewed at the Super Computing ’11 conference, this week in Seattle.
The updated processor is set to debut at the Texas Advanced Computing Center (TACC) at the University of Texas in Austin by 2013.
Intel stated that Knights Corner will be based on the many-integrated core (MIC) architecture, as well as featuring the next generation 22-nanometer 3D process technology.
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The next generation tech will provide an additional 8 petaflops of performance, bringing it to a total of 10 teraflops in overall performance (10,000 trillion operations per second).
It is based on an x86 architecture and Intel claims that MIC processors will be easier to program. Intel’s main competition is coming from NVIDIA and AMD which currently provide the most double precision floating point performance than any x86 CPU available.
Intel plans to move towards exascale supercomputing power by 2018, while significantly reducing power consumption in the process. In comparison, today’s fastest supercomputer, the K Computer at the Riken Advanced Institute for Computational Science in Japan, reaches 10 petaflops in performance.
Knights Corner will be the first processor to have a single chip that can achieve 1 teraflop of double-precision performance, which would enable more specific mathematical calculations and scientific results.
Intel is hailing the processor as a major breakthrough in performance and the future applications could provide a host of possibilities.
