Intel to Ship Samples of Experimental 48-core Processor
Intel will ship computers with an experimental 48-core processor to researchers by the end of the second quarter as the company tries to reshape its future chips. Limited quantities of the processor will be sent primarily to academic institutions, said Sean Koehl, technology evangelist with Intel Labs, during an event in New York on Wednesday. The chip may not become commercially available as it is part of a research project, but features from the processor could be implemented in future chips.
The 48-core chip operates at about the clock speed of Atom-based chips, said Christopher Anderson, an engineer with Intel Labs. Intel’s latest Atom chips are power-efficient, are targeted at netbooks and small desktops, and run at clock speeds between 1.66GHz and 1.83GHz. The 48-core processor, built on a mesh architecture, could lead to a massive performance boost when all the chips communicate with each other, Anderson said. Adding cores to processors is considered a power-efficient way of boosting chip performance. The traditional way of boosting performance was by cranking up CPU clock speed, but that led to excessive heat dissipation and power consumption. The processor draws between 25 watts and 125 watts of power, and the chip can shut down cores to reduce clock speed and power consumption.
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