Dual-core not enough? What about 16 cores?

Hannover (Germany) - Dual-core is as good as it gets these days and even if you stretch a bit, a workstation with four physical cores typically is the limit even for enthusiasts. Tyan, however, demonstrates a solution that delivers an extra punch of performance: The "Personal Super Computer" (PSC) can hold up to eight Opteron or Pentium D CPUs for a total of 16 physical cores.

The PSC is based on four boards that can hold up to two dual-core processors each. The AMD version supports Opteron 200 processors up to 64 GB of system memory; the Intel version Pentium 4 or Pentium D chips and up to 32 GB. Given its performance capability the desktop cluster comes in a fairly small package - the case measures 14 inches wide by 12.6 inches tall and 26.7 inches deep.

The boards come with four dedicated 350 watt power supplies and are interconnected via PCI-Express backplane and have two Gigabit Ethernet ports each for external connectivity. Up to four SATA hard drives can be installed. While power consumption should be expected to be substantial, Tyan promises that the system remains somewhat "quiet" at about 47 dB - which can be compared to the noise level generated by some performance case fans.

Tyan's Personal Super Computer is set to go into mass production in the second quarter. Pricing has not been announced.

Humphrey Cheung was a senior editor at Tom's Hardware, covering a range of topics on computing and consumer electronics. You can find more of his work in many major publications, including CNN and FOX, to name a few.