Kentsfield is a mighty impressive processor with four 4 physical cores, but now scientists at Tokyo’s University has presented a processor which brings multi-core processors to a whole new level. The circuit works at 500MHz and contains no less than 512 separate cores and has been developed as a specialized mathematics processor. The processor has been code-named Grape DR and is located on an external PCI-X cards and assists the system’s regular CPU with advanced mathematical calculations as each core has been designed to handle a specific mathematical instruction such as floating point addition or multiplication.
“The 512 cores are split into 16 groups of 32, each group capable of processing a single type of FP instruction. The chip itself measures 17 x 17mm and contains 300m transistors. It consumes up to 60W of power.”
Today Grape DR will offer a performance at up to 512 Tflops, but it is aiming for a model which will reach over 2 Pflops in 2008. Since it is a specially designed mathematics processor you can’t really compare it to other supercomputers, but it’s still an impressive circuit the scientists have developed.
