Clearspeed had announced in June of this year plans to introduce an add-in card carrying two co-processors that are capable of adding 50 GFlops of performance to a workstation. The card, based on PCI-X, is likely to ship in the fourth quarter of this year. In Q1 of 2006, Clearspeed will add a PCI Express version of the card - also carrying two co-processors delivering 25 GFlops each.
During a demonstration at IDF, the PCI Express - consuming a total of just 25 watts - card showed a performance peak of about 55 GFlops with a minimum of about 45 GFlops. Putting this into perspective, a 2-way Xeon system with 3.2 GHz processors was shown running parallel to the card with a peak performance of about 10 GFlops.
The obvious advantage of the PCI Express x8 version of the card is a much broader workstation market as well as a higher bandwidth capability compared to the PCI-X model. Theoretically, maximum is 1 GByte per second up and down, which is estimated to be a more realistic 750 MByte per second each way in everyday use.
Pricing as not been announced yet, but the fact that a "CSX600" card is not a volume product already indicates that boards won't come cheap. Company representatives declined to specify a possible price but mention that 2-processor cards will run somewhere in a range of $1000 to $10,000. (THG)
Wolfgang Gruener is an experienced professional in digital strategy and content, specializing in web strategy, content architecture, user experience, and applying AI in content operations within the insurtech industry. His previous roles include Director, Digital Strategy and Content Experience at American Eagle, Managing Editor at TG Daily, and contributing to publications like Tom's Guide and Tom's Hardware.
