Intel 50+ cores - you know anything about this?

[DrPop]

You guys - JPM or anybody know anything about this? 50 cores on a die - is that CPU cores or some kind of GPU type cores? What got my attention was this: capable of delivering more than 1 TFLOPs of double precision floating point performance.

Thanks for any info from the gear heads.

[DrPop]

OK, from one of the comments below the article, "This is a co-processor. The 6990 does 1.37 TFLOPs Double Precision and 5.40 TFLOPs Single Precision. The 7990 and above should be much higher."

So, it looks like this is a 50 core co-processor which can hit 1+ TFLOPs Double Precision. Not quite as high as a dual GPU can. BUT...it take ONE PCI-e slot, and I wonder if it would cool better than a GPU? Also, could it possibly run some of the "CPU Only" projects out there? So we could have GPU speed on CPU projects? Or would this only run the "GPU type projects?"
I guess time will tell, but it seems interesting for crunching, at least to me.

[Fire$torm]

OK, from one of the comments below the article, "This is a co-processor. The 6990 does 1.37 TFLOPs Double Precision and 5.40 TFLOPs Single Precision. The 7990 and above should be much higher."

So, it looks like this is a 50 core co-processor which can hit 1+ TFLOPs Double Precision. Not quite as high as a dual GPU can. BUT...it take ONE PCI-e slot, and I wonder if it would cool better than a GPU? Also, could it possibly run some of the "CPU Only" projects out there? So we could have GPU speed on CPU projects? Or would this only run the "GPU type projects?"
I guess time will tell, but it seems interesting for crunching, at least to me.

According to that article it is Intel's equivalent of a GPU minus the graphics capability. So yeah, it can do work like a GPU (Large Scale Parallel Processing) but it will use existing x86 (aka CPU) programming. I may be wrong (probably so) but I don't think any multi-processor x86 apps currently exist. All multi-core CPUs on the market use AMD_64 code. This should be interesting to watch develop. For the BOINC community, this most likely won't be available for many years due to the current lack of market penetration (Its new tech......).

[Duke of Buckingham]

In english please




Duke

[DrPop]

@Duke - your last pictogram of "English" there looked mighty fetching! English indeed! I'll take two, then, please.

[Duke of Buckingham]

This ones protest a lot about speaking English. They say they can speak English in their countries also.

They are from Antigua and Barbuda, Bahamas, Australia and New Zealand.

Speechless Duke

[Zytozux]

You guys - JPM or anybody know anything about this? 50 cores on a die - is that CPU cores or some kind of GPU type cores? What got my attention was this: capable of delivering more than 1 TFLOPs of double precision floating point performance.

Thanks for any info from the gear heads.

[John P. Myers]

I want one! lol

the thing that jumps out at me the most is that it's a co-processor. Back in the day, they developed their first co-processor for PCs which was the 8087. I had one. Loved it. But it had a special slot on the motherboard in order to add it to the system. This seems to be made for a PCIe slot. Not sure how cool i am with that. But i really wouldn't be surprised if there were some server/workstation boards that may have a slot for these chips in the future.

[rgathright]

OK, from one of the comments below the article, "This is a co-processor. The 6990 does 1.37 TFLOPs Double Precision and 5.40 TFLOPs Single Precision. The 7990 and above should be much higher."

So, it looks like this is a 50 core co-processor which can hit 1+ TFLOPs Double Precision. Not quite as high as a dual GPU can. BUT...it take ONE PCI-e slot, and I wonder if it would cool better than a GPU? Also, could it possibly run some of the "CPU Only" projects out there? So we could have GPU speed on CPU projects? Or would this only run the "GPU type projects?"
I guess time will tell, but it seems interesting for crunching, at least to me.

I have known this was in the works for over a year now with a demo back in 2010 at a similar trade show.

Making these a reality for desktop/server users is a whole other world for Intel.

I see this as Intel's effort to compete with NVIDIA GPU processing capability.

[John P. Myers]

I have known this was in the works for over a year now with a demo back in 2010 at a similar trade show.

Making these a reality for desktop/server users is a whole other world for Intel.

I see this as Intel's effort to compete with NVIDIA GPU processing capability.

My understanding is they are only meant for servers/workstations since they only seem to be compatible with Xeon processors. Might not be what you wanted to hear, but on the good side, Intel has made an 80-core CPU about 18 months ago. They sent computers to several software developers with these CPUs in them so they could learn how to properly write programs that could benefit from all of those cores. Supposedly, if these people catch on to the concept, we should be seeing desktop CPUs with more than 8 cores in them shortly (and by shortly, i mean within 2 years).