Intel has now displayed the 80 core processor it presented earlier. This chip will offer a performance at up to 1 Teraflop, but unfortunately this is still a very early prototype which doesn’t even have a working connection to any kind of memory. The processor is actually not an x86 but instead built around VLIW (Very Long Instruction Word), which is a simpler form that utilize the parallel structure a lot better. The processor consists of only 100 million transistors and measures 275mm² and even if this prototype was made using 65nm technology it is suppose to be a central object of Intel’s work with its new high-k 45nm process.
Intel showed off a few demos which displayed the power of the chip and there is certainly no doubt that there is a lot of potential here, although it’s mainly for scientific applications.
But then we have the all too frequently occurring limitation of software and this one is no exception as it needs software written especially for it. Whether we will see this monster in five years or not, as Intel has promised, is hard to tell, but it’s hard not to be impressed by a the possibilities of an 80 core processor, even though there are more specialized processors with considerably more cores.
