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[bigtroyjon]

Wow: Intel unveils 1 teraflop chip with 50 plus cores

It wasn't that long ago that Intel was boasting about the first supercomputer with sustained 1 teraflop performance. That was in 1997, on a system with 9,298 Pentium II chips that filled 72 computing cabinets.

Now Intel has squeezed that much performance onto a matchbook-sized chip, dubbed "Knights Corner," based on its new "Many Integrated Core" architecture, or MIC. (Earlier I referred to it as "Knights Ferry," which is its development kit.) It was designed largely in the Portland area and has just started manufacturing.

"In 15 years that's what we've been able to do. That is stupendous. You're witnessing the 1 teraflop barrier busting," Rajeeb Hazra, general manager of Intel's technical computing group, said at an unveiling ceremony.

Ughh, typo in the title should say 1 teraflop

 

[RoboPlato]

Holy crap.

Spoiler

Can it run Crysis?

 

[Sapiens]

Wake me up when we get to skynet. Until then, any computer powerful enough to run Angry Birds is fine.

 

[MorisUkunRasik]

"Sir, but can it run Crysis?"
"Girl, whatchu think?"

 

[Spider from Mars]

Sounds made up

 

[Orayn]

Oh shit, the second coming of Larrabee! Too bad we'll never see what this could have been if it stayed a GPU...

Sounds made up

They've been demo-ing these since 2009 or so. It's basically a crapload of low power Intel Atom cores smooshed onto a single die.

 

[Vicros]

My render times would be off the hook with this thing. Just chewing through scenes. 50 cores!

 

[Mungular]

holy shit. mind=blown

 

[Bernbaum]

Intel is the Epic Meal Time of chipmakers.

 

[Medalion]

Chipception

 

[ReBurn]

Maybe they'll use it in the new Xbox.

 

[oxrock]

I want this just to have it now. I don't even know wtf i'd do with it. Run folding @ home I guess.

 

[Orayn]

Maybe they'll use it in the new Xbox.

Well, the main purpose of this thing is to serve as a co-processor for floating-point calculations, meaning you could potentially use it like Cell and offload stuff like physics, heavy number crunching, and certain visual effects.

 

[Zombie James]

Intel already did this with Larrabee two years ago, though...

Justin Rattner, Intel CTO, delivered a keynote at the Supercomputing 2009 conference on November 17, 2009. During his talk he demonstrated an overclocked Larrabee processor topping one TeraFLOPS in performance. He claimed this was the first public demonstration of a single chip solution exceeding one TeraFLOPS.

The second demo was given at the SC09 conference in Portland at November 17, 2009 during a keynote by Intel CTO Justin Rattner. A Larrabee card was able to achieve 1006 GFLops in the SGEMM 4Kx4K calculation.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Larrabee_(microarchitecture)

 

[TacticalFox88]

Chipception

We have to go deeper.

 

[chuckddd]

Finally! Lag free Battlefield3 servers are coming!

 

[lunarworks]

So... each core on that thing is about as powerful as 200 Pentium IIs?

 

[squidyj]

wake me when you hit a pedoFLOP.

 

[Zoramon089]

Holy crap.

Spoiler

Can it run Crysis?

Of course it can

Spoiler

on medium settings

 

[XiaNaphryz]

So we'd still need around 180 of these chips to get around the equivalent of our current renderfarm. Assuming core performance is roughly about the same 1:1 anyway.

 

[MeBecomingI]

wake me when you hit a pedoFLOP.

Does not compute... or if there is some inside joke meme thing I am missing, but I quite laughed at that.

Petaflop.

 

[ThoseDeafMutes]

wake me when you hit a pedoFLOP.

Is that what happens when a Roman Polanski films bombs?

 

[XMonkey]

Seems destined to live in the realm of special applications. We have a hard enough time getting most programs to use 4 cores. Forget 50.

 

[rohlfinator]

So we'd still need around 180 of these chips to get around the equivalent of our current renderfarm. Assuming core performance is roughly about the same 1:1 anyway.

Geez... how many processors does your renderfarm have? Or is it GPUs?

 

[Marvel_us]

That article has it wrong. Knights Ferry is the older revision. The one demoed was Knight Corner. There are big differences between the two.

 

[Kaako]

So we'd still need around 180 of these chips to get around the equivalent of our current renderfarm. Assuming core performance is roughly about the same 1:1 anyway.

Or you can double that 180 and have twice the performance of your current renderfarm! Yea boi.

 

[OnPoint]

Is that what happens when a Roman Polanski films bombs?

It's when he dives into a pool.

 

[dvolovets]

Is that what happens when a Roman Polanski films bombs?

I laughed way too hard at this...

 

[Koodo]

Teraflop? I want a teraslay.

 

[Orayn]

Seems destined to live in the realm of special applications. We have a hard enough time getting most programs to use 4 cores. Forget 50.

These would be used for number crunching applications in much the same way as CUDA or OpenCL on newer video cards. Also, I'm sure there's some way to coax these into giving you insane scores on various mass computing programs like World Community Grid for Folding@Home.

 

[hteng]

so how do you cool this thing without it catching on fire?

 

[AbsoluteZero]

Should be good for Dolphin.

 

[computers putin']

Is that what happens when a Roman Polanski films bombs?

9/10

 

[Emitan]

But can it emulate the Saturn?

 

[Unregistered007]

so

Spoiler

only 2 of those in the next xbox 360

?

 

[Fuzzery]

Intel is the Epic Meal Time of chipmakers.

Haha

 

[Noshino]

so how do you cool this thing without it catching on fire?

Glue




3M Glue.....

 

[Medalion]

Intel is the Epic Meal Time of chipmakers.

Only if the chip was powered by the awesome power of bacon strips

 

[XiaNaphryz]

Geez... how many processors does your renderfarm have? Or is it GPUs?

GPUs are on a separate pool, much much smaller in comparison.

 

[sleeping_dragon]

just imagine this thing power the PS4.

 

[Ashes]

Is that what happens when a Roman Polanski films bombs?

Oh, well done.

 

[Drazgul]

But can you overclock it?

 

[bgassassin]

That article has it wrong. Knights Ferry is the older revision. The one demoed was Knight Corner. There are big differences between the two.

Yeah. Knight's Corner is the 50+ core version and will use Intel's 22nm process.

 

[bigtroyjon]

That article has it wrong. Knights Ferry is the older revision. The one demoed was Knight Corner. There are big differences between the two.

Article has been changed.

Now Intel has squeezed that much performance onto a matchbook-sized chip, dubbed "Knights Corner," based on its new "Many Integrated Core" architecture, or MIC. (Earlier I referred to it as "Knights Ferry," which is its development kit.)

 

[tapedeck]

But will it blend?

 

[Jasoco]

Can I get one in my MacBook Air?

 

[fierrotlepou]

So is this like 50 cores instead of the 4 cores we have in the i7? Which is a LOT?

 

[Something Wicked]

wake me when you hit a pedoFLOP.

Is that what happens when a Roman Polanski films bombs?

The setup and the great finish. Good job, guys.

 

[sixteen-bit]

PS4?

 

[DonasaurusRex]

so...which is better this or Tesla from nvidia