Intel Demos Single Chip with 48 Cores
Intel's latest prototype could eventually see what you're doing while dancing in front of the monitor.
Intel announced that company researchers demonstrated an experimental, 48-core processor--dubbed the "single-chip cloud computer"--that will supposedly pave the way for future generations of processors. According to the company, the "concept chip" is aimed at scaling on-chip performance, communication, and power consumption. The new prototype also offers 10 to 20 times the processing engines found in today's Intel Core processors.
Despite its many cores, Intel says that the futuristic prototype chip will consume the same amount of energy as two standard household light bulbs thanks to newly invented power management techniques. Even more, Intel claims that the processor could eventually become sophisticated enough to let PCs use "vision" to interact with people.
"Imagine, for example, someday interacting with a computer for a virtual dance lesson or on-line shopping that uses a future laptop's 3-D camera and display to show you a "mirror" of yourself wearing the clothes you are interested in," the company said. "Twirl and turn and watch how the fabric drapes and how the color complements your skin tone. This kind of interaction could eliminate the need of keyboards, remote controls or joysticks for gaming. Some researchers believe computers may even be able to read brain waves, so simply thinking about a command, such as dictating words, would happen without speaking."
Intel also said that it deemed the prototype as the "single-chip cloud computer" because of its similarities with data centers organized in a group to create a "cloud" of computing. The prototype's 48 cores seemingly mimics the configuration of a cloud server system, however casts aside the physical distance and is reduced down to a piece of 45nm, high-k metal-gate silicon "about the size of a postage stamp."
To learn more about the prototype processor, head here.
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wow! finally some real A.I. soon? huh! not 2 years soon, at least 10-15 years.
48 cores damn!
I'll take two please
I see Skynet comming..
i suppose i should hold off on my next upgrade and wait for the 48 core cpu?
48 cores? very nice.
I'll take one
We already have that kind of processing power. It's called a GPGPU
Can it play Crysis? lol. I had to say that before some one else dose. Wow! I can't wait for this. Why not just make a 1000 core CPU.
First we need to utilize 4 cores.
0_0 That is just amazing....
Imagine if you can do folding proteins on that thing, it is going to be like 200000PPD
I would be more interested in what Intel defines 'Cloud Computing' as. Microsoft's explination is like watching a politician on the news... Lots of words, not much said.
I had a teacher last year who had these... "for fun" predictions about the future of hardware specially CPUs, he said that in few years (this happened 1 year ago) there will have invented a CPU that works as a computer network, with cores as work stations with their own IP address, I actually can't believe that he was almost right.... Being an Old man it's gonna be really fun guys! can you imagine.. all that free time with computers with this capabilities XD!
first we need to utilize 64 bit software
Before all of you get all excited, those cores are probably much simpler than those currently on the i7s, or even the AMD Phenom IIs. That said this is still pretty interesting, but we'll have to wait and see if anything comes from it, or if it ends up as revolutionary as the Itanium
.
A.I. will never happen on x86 - it takes too much power. I read an estimate for simulating human brain on silicon would take output of an entire nuclear plant, i.e. hundreds of megawatts. Unless you ditch the whole ones and zeros modality and build your silicon more like a brain that is. Maybe the 48 cores is a bridge to this type of hybrid computing
Galileo will never sail all the way around the world - it's too flat.
dang! 48 cores..... When will i be able to get one of those.
jk
now THAT is some fast word typing.
First we need to utilize 4 cores.
Exactly! There's VERY FEW programs optimized for 4 cores, let alone 48 cores. Programming REALLY needs to catch up to hardware now (esp. considering i9 will be out soon).
48 Full HD porn movies playing at the same time! Nice!
I wondered where Intel's Pentaflop chip project went to.
I wondered where Intel's Pentaflop chip project went to.
Sorry for the double post
Anything that kills x86 has to be good. I don't care if it has four cores, or 48 cores, as long as it doesn't suffer from x86, it's a step in the right direction.
But, this is obviously going to be a niche product. They really need to find a way to get rid of the x86 instruction set that plagues the computer industry. It's like God's little joke - arguably the worst instruction set created has become the most popular. Part of the move to go green should be to get rid of x86. Think of the lost performance, and extra wattage used because of it, then multiply it by the 100 of millions of computers that are being used. It might be a little per computer, but when you add it all up, it's still a huge amount.
I guess he's not entirely cruel - Unix never got popular.
AMD where art thou?
I can run 3 WU's of every BOINC project simultaneously! Sign me up!!
AMD where art thou?
pwning nvidia right now.
VERY COOL..But will cost a ton of money.. What home user needs 48 cores. We haven't mastered 4 cores in software.. This would be great for servers..
wow! finally some real A.I. soon? huh! not 2 years soon, at least 10-15 years.
Yeah, I have this great code for real A.I., I just need a slightly faster computer to run it.
OMG, 48 cores. We might actually have a purpose for 64-bit OS's, yet. Immediately what comes to mind is gaming servers which would benefit. If you had a computer with one of these chips in it and you were utilizing every core for CoD4 servers (w/ max players per server), I couldn't even begin to imagine how much RAM would be required. Any guesses on how many servers could be run given this chip and how much memory would be required?
... fcuk cores!!! Where is larrabee? Don't they know, that the gpu's are taking over?