On an 80-core chip not much larger than the size of a fingernail and using less electricity than most of today's home appliances, Intel Corp. has developed the world's first programmable processor, the company said on Feb. 11.
The new technology stems from Intel's 'Tera-scale computing' research aimed at delivering Teraflop -- or trillions of calculations per second -- performance for future PCs and servers.
While Intel says it is not bringing this exact chip designed with floating point cores to market, it feels that the research is "instrumental in investigating new innovations in individual or specialized processor or core functions, the types of chip-to-chip and chip-to-computer interconnects required to best move data and most importantly, how software will need to be designed to best leverage multiple processor cores."
"Our researchers have achieved a wonderful and key milestone in terms of being able to drive multi-core and parallel computing performance forward," said Justin R. Rattner, Intel's chief technology officer. "It points the way to the near future when Teraflop-capable designs will be commonplace and will reshape what we can all expect from our computers and the Internet at home and in the office."
