IDF Fall 2006: From Core 2 Quadro to 80 Cores

[pschmid]

Intel is proud of its Kentsfield quad core and refers to our technology article. But IDF is stuffed with news on the next-generation mobile platform, an 80-core project and high-efficiency power supplies.

 

[Mephistopheles]

Heh, Theinq said Intel didn't want that Kentsfield review published.

Good thing THG published it anyway.

I'm glad we have more info on Kentsfield. Though I'd say that the main news there is more in the lines of a Frankensteinian "It's aliveee!"

 

[M3th0d]

your link is messed up

 

[sojrner]

The projected performance of Intel's 80-core prototypes at the time it could become available is expected to hit one teraflop

Anyone notice the push for FP performance here? Looking at other articles like this one and one here it is interesting that it takes 80 cores in "the future" to get where 2 or 3 GPU's can get now for FP performance. Granted, the GPU is not as generalized as the cpu, but still...

Also, if you look at the performance of a core2 based xeon at 24 GFLOPS and then see that they just scaled that up to get the FP numbers for the 80 core, do you really think that it will scale linearly? Knowing how the current procs do not scale so nicely, I doubt that the 80 core one will either. So perhaps 80 cores won't get where GPUs are now. lol

things that make you go hmm...

 

[orsino]

Yes, the link is definitely wrong, but the story is on the THG front page. Very interesting developments. However, how in the hell would you ever keep that 80-core cool? Or is it the world's first interplanetary PC that only be used on Titan?

 

[Mephistopheles]

I think people around here are still thinking it's 80 fully-fledged general-purpose cores sitting there.

It's not. It's probably more like 80 calculators put together to work in parallel. They're much, much simpler...

This is a completely different beast. It can't be judged by our standard "one, two, four" cores. They're not regular x86 cores...

 

[orsino]

Yeah, but I'll still bet ya you could run it flat out and BBQ a steak on it! :lol:

 

[sojrner]

that was my thought, but 80 cores doing one teraflop calculates out to be close to the numbers in that other Tom's article for a dual core xeon (24 GFLOPS)... that means that either A. they are the same cores and they expect linear scaling, or B. the numbers somewhere are wrong and they are in fact "simpler" cores... hmm...

 

[tokataro]

What was that bit about lasers at the end of the highlight vid?

 

[orsino]

What's the bottom line? Is it Quadro or Quad???

 

[dasickninja]

Its Quad. Quadro sounds cooler but Nvidia already owns the name.

 

[orsino]

Y'know, back in the day when I was a small businessman, I ran a name search before I registered my company name. Did it myself. Cost me ten bucks. Hard to believe that Intel megacorp wouldn't do at least that much due diligence!

Could have been worse. They could have called it the Intel Core 2 Athlon.

:lol:

 

[dasickninja]

Nvidia has had the Quadro name for waaay back. No way in hell, their giving that up.

 

[joex444]

"The remaining 20-30% are energy that is converted into heat and thus is wasted."

Ugh...from my thermal physics book: "Heat is a verb"

Maybe it should've read "converted into excess thermal energy"

 

[gm0n3y]

That last part about the power supply I am actually quite interested to hear more about. Mostly I want to know when this technology will come out and will it be an intel only thing. I hope that other PS makers will be able to use the technology and will keep the prices down. This would be a nice benefit for OCers.

 

[joebob2000]

That last part about the power supply I am actually quite interested to hear more about. Mostly I want to know when this technology will come out and will it be an intel only thing. I hope that other PS makers will be able to use the technology and will keep the prices down. This would be a nice benefit for OCers.

Me too. I think I heard them mention something about DC at the end as well. Will intel/google be pushing for DC powered servers in the near future?

Also: In physics, heat, symbolized by Q, is defined as energy in transit. or maybe The flow of thermal energy from one system to another is called heat. From the fairly well written wikipedia articles on each.

 

[dasickninja]

Yeah they said that the new single rail hi-efficentcy PSU would accept direct DC input.

 

[exit2dos]

If anyone is interested, Intel is webcasting the IDF keynotes here.


Pretty nice, although the PC/Mac commercial parody isn't as funny as I thought it would be.

EDIT-> Gamers, check out the Otellini keynote. About 1/4 of the way in, Remedy is showcasing their next release - this is what you need more cores for.

 

[crow_smiling]

Check out the PicoPSU which is a tiny DC to DC converter that is so small you would hardly believe it. It plugs directly into the ATX 20/24 pin motherboard connector and relies on an external laptop style power brick to provide it with 12V power.
The current top end version supplies 120W DC which might not sound a lot, but is enough to run a Merom at 2.5 GHz with 2GB DDR2, a 500GB SATA2 drive and a 7900 GS. It’s very efficient at low wattage levels unlike typical ATX power supplies and because the power brick is external it removes that source of heat from the case which is a bonus.

There are similar solutions already available that offer power levels over 200W and still use a fanless external power brick. Expect to see a lot more of this as power consumption becomes more of a marketable strategy. Hopefully Intel can kick-start the whole industry towards this way of thinking

 

[dasickninja]

I forsee with my cristal ball that that will be mainly for shuttle PC's, ultra mobiles and HTPC's

 

[0zzy]

I have a question for ya'll, Will AMD come up with a similar show to counter Intel, or does everyone think Intel has AMD beat already?

Apart from acquiring ATI AMD have been very quiet.

 

[gm0n3y]

ATI has always held their cards a little closer than Intel.

 

[crow_smiling]

I forsee with my cristal ball that that will be mainly for shuttle PC's, ultra mobiles and HTPC's

And don't forget the tree hugging community.

 

[orsino]

Nvidia has had the Quadro name for waaay back. No way in hell, their giving that up.

Would have loved to be a fly on the wall in the Intel boardroom that day.

"Er... sir... our new Core 2 Quadro is infringing on a Nvidia trademark."

"Hmm... well, AMD got ATI, just go out and buy Nvidia. And bring me back a corned beef on rye."

:lol:

 

[dasickninja]

Nvidia has had the Quadro name for waaay back. No way in hell, their giving that up.

Would have loved to be a fly on the wall in the Intel boardroom that day.

"Er... sir... our new Core 2 Quadro is infringing on a Nvidia trademark."

"Hmm... well, AMD got ATI, just go out and buy Nvidia. And bring me back a corned beef on rye."

:lol:
Genius +1