Intel Demos 48-Core Processor

Wireless News
12-09-2009
Intel Demos 48-Core Processor
Type: News

Researchers from Intel Labs demonstrated an experimental, 48- core Intel processor, or "single-chip cloud computer."

According to Intel, this chip boasts about 10 to 20 times the processing engines inside today's Intel Core-branded processors. The long-term research goal is to add incredible scaling features to future computers that spur entirely new software applications and human-machine interfaces. The company plans to engage industry and academia next year by sharing 100 or more of these experimental chips for hands-on research in developing new software applications and programming models.
While Intel will integrate features in a new line of Core- branded chips early next year and introduce six- and eight-core processors later in 2010, this prototype contains 48 fully programmable Intel processing cores, the most ever on a single silicon chip. It also includes a high-speed on-chip network for sharing information along with newly invented power management techniques that allow all 48 cores to operate at as little as 25 watts, or at 125 watts when running at maximum performance (about as much as today's Intel processors and two standard household light bulbs).

Intel Labs has nicknamed this test chip a "single-chip cloud computer" because it resembles the organization of datacenters used to create a "cloud" of computing resources over the Internet, a notion of delivering such services as online banking, social networking and online stores to millions of users.

"With a chip like this, you could imagine a cloud datacenter of the future which will be an order of magnitude more energy efficient than what exists," said Justin Rattner, head of Intel Labs and Intel's CTO. "Over time, I expect these concepts to find their way into mainstream devices, just as automotive technology such as electronic engine control, air bags and anti-lock braking eventually found their way into all cars."

The concept chip features a high-speed network between cores to share information and data. This technique gives improvement in communication performance and energy efficiency over today's datacenter model, since data packets only have to move millimeters on chip instead of tens of meters to another computer system.

Application software can use this network to pass information directly between cooperating cores in a matter of a few microseconds, reducing the need to access data in slower off-chip system memory. Applications can also manage exactly which cores are to be used for a given task at a given time, matching the performance and energy needs to the demands of each.

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