50 core Knights Corner processor from Intel

Back in 1997 it took 9680 Pentium Pro processors to create a computer capable of 1 Teraflops of processing power. 14 years later it takes just one Knights Corner MIC (many integrated core) processor with 50 cores to achieve the same processing workload. The processor features 50 x86 co-processor cores optimised for floating performance manufactured using the 3D tri gate 22nm process.

The processor is capable of running highly parallel x86 processes such as weather modeling, protein folding and other large scientific projects. It will be a processor unlike what we have seen before. Since it is a co processor it works via a standard dual width 16X PCI-E card.

“Intel first demonstrated a Teraflop supercomputer utilizing 9,680 Intel® Pentium Pro® Processors in 1997 as part of Sandia Lab’s ASCI RED system,” said Rajeeb Hazra, General Manager of Intel’s Technical Computing Group. “Having this performance now in a single chip based on Intel MIC architecture is a milestone that will once again be etched into HPC history.”

The development is a huge leap forward in processing power and super computing but it is still in very early stages, Intel have set the target date for their computing exascale targets for 2018 even though we have functioning samples of the Knights Corner chip this year.

Source: CPU World