eWeek: Intel Enters ‘Tera-scale’ Era
“Tera-scale computing is coming,” said Jerry Bautista, director of Intel’s Tera-scale Computing Research Program. “What we are doing is bringing supercomputing-like capabilities to PCs, servers, and handheld and mobile devices.”
During the ISSCC show, Intel researchers are preparing to present nine different research papers, one of which will address the details of the company’s efforts to develop a processor capable of delivering teraflops—trillions of calculation per second—of performance while consuming as few as 62 watts of power.
While Intel officials were quick to say that the 80-core chip is more a proof-of-concept design that will likely never come to market, it is possible that within 10 to 15 years certain elements and design specifications used to create this chip will be integrated with other processors.
Intel has already said that it would try to offer processors with 10 or more cores by the end of the decade. In November 2006, the Santa Clare, Calif., company began its march to offering more and more cores when it offered quad-core chips for servers and workstations that offered 1.5 times the performance of dual-core chips. [More]