Intel introduced the Latest 50-core processor

Intel announced a new processor «Knights Corner», oriented for use in server computers. This is a  first in the world of chip, which has just 50 cores, the level of its performance more than 1 teraflops. The main competitor - AMD - boasts a processor with 16 cores in the server CPU Opteron 6200.

Knights Corner processor is manufactured on 22 nanometer technology with the use of standard "three-dimensional" transistor Tri-Gate, which allows them to be mounted vertically and horizontally. It is noteworthy that the 50-core chip from Intel is fully compatible with the most popular x86 architecture. Knights Corner with the server chip family of Xeon E5 (micro architecture Sandy Bridge) will be installed at supercomputer Stampede, which is being built for the University of Texas.

It is expected that the total computational power of this machine is 10 petaflops - a 80% performance supercomputer will meet the 50-nuclear Knights Corner, and for the other 20% - chips E5. Starting the Stampede is scheduled for 2013.

At today's most powerful supercomputer is Fujitsu K. The performance of this monster, which is located at the Institute for Advanced Computational Science Riken in Kobe, more than 10 petaflops per second. For comparison, the computational power of a chip in the iPhone 4 A4 is at 36 megaflops. At Fujitsu K used 88 000 128 chips, each of which has 8 cores.

Intel introduced the latest powerful processor Xeon E5

Intel chose the SC11 conference as a platform for pre-release of a new generation of chips Xeon E5, which are designed for workstations and servers. Immediately after the presentation of the processor chips led the top ten running on supercomputers (according to Top 500), ahead of its competitors in performance more than doubled. In addition, the chip will be the first of a series of Xeon, equipped with a standard serial bus support for PCI Express 3.0, which doubles the throughput compared to the previous version (also PCI Express 3.0 has a high bandwidth when connecting to the Internet, and clusters of computers to local peripherals such as video cards).

Although the chips are already used to create a supercomputer, but, as stated by Intel, referring to the time required for the establishment of small workstations and servers, widespread Xeon E5 will be received in the first half of 2012. Also at the conference was represented by trial version of the processor Knights Corner, which may have more than 50 cores and provide record levels - more than one teraflop. Intel said that the finished version of the chip will be produced on 22 nm technology. While we do not know where to begin deliveries of Knights Corner, however, judging by the use of 22nm technology, large-scale output can be assigned to the year 2012.

So far, on a Mac Pro from Apple, as well as on workstations based on Xeon (which are mainly used in the corporate sector and in professional fields that require large computing power), in some cases used chips that did not get updated in 2010. Partly because of this kind of "stupor" from Intel, there were rumors about the production end Mac Pro and switch Apple on home PCs, such as the iMac .