Intel To Ship 48-Core Processor This Summer

Off topic discussions that do not fit into any of the above can go here. Please keep it clean and respectful.
User avatar
Andy
Respected Member
Posts: 279
Joined: Fri Dec 11, 2009 1:34 pm

Intel To Ship 48-Core Processor This Summer

Post by Andy »

Courtesy of Electronics Weekly: http://www.electronicsweekly.com/Articl ... summer.htm

Sounds familiar...
The cores, organised in a mesh architecture, are said to run at between 1.2-1.8GHz and, like the Inmos transputer, have multiple I/Os to connect to eachother and buffer memory for each core.
Each core can talk to every other core and the chip has 24 routers on-board to speed up core-to-core data exchange.


User avatar
otitov
XCore Addict
Posts: 207
Joined: Thu Dec 10, 2009 11:00 pm
Location: Mexico
Contact:

Post by otitov »

future is in few inches from us - very soon we will see this amazing 48-core chip, and in a very few monts out brand new mobile phone will be running 128-core central chip. wow!

what is the magic behind "48"? why they do not use binary stepping, like 1,2,4,8,16,... cores per chip?
User avatar
leon_heller
XCore Expert
Posts: 546
Joined: Thu Dec 10, 2009 10:41 pm
Location: St. Leonards-on-Sea, E. Sussex, UK.
Contact:

Post by leon_heller »

Perhaps it's the maximum "nice looking" number they could get on the chip with the process they are using. 47 or 49 just doesn't look right, and powers of two would restrict them to a maximum of 32 if 64 is too many. My graphics card has an NVIDIA chip with 48 processors, but they make one with 256 processors, and are working on one with 512.
Last edited by leon_heller on Tue Apr 27, 2010 7:03 pm, edited 1 time in total.
User avatar
lilltroll
XCore Expert
Posts: 956
Joined: Fri Dec 11, 2009 3:53 am
Location: Sweden, Eskilstuna

Post by lilltroll »

One answer is that it depends on the size that is used in production. Intel changed from 45 nm to 32 nm some time ago. That made it possible to fit 6 cores on the same area as using 4 cores in 45 nm technology in the Core i7 family. The core i7 can "eat" over 100 Amps in current as it already is, so it is not trivial to make a larger die.
32 nm is much smaller than visible light- so we can not expect it to be easy to reduce the size - the size reduction only takes small steps in the near future, and quantum tunneling will become a large problem with our existing silicon technology.
Probably not the most confused programmer anymore on the XCORE forum.
User avatar
otitov
XCore Addict
Posts: 207
Joined: Thu Dec 10, 2009 11:00 pm
Location: Mexico
Contact:

Post by otitov »

looks like "48" is a popular number, must be a technology constrain as you mention.

i have othe explanation now - what do you think about sixteen three times? :-)
User avatar
leon_heller
XCore Expert
Posts: 546
Joined: Thu Dec 10, 2009 10:41 pm
Location: St. Leonards-on-Sea, E. Sussex, UK.
Contact:

Post by leon_heller »

It's more likely to be 6x8, giving something approaching a square, which keeps the connections short.
User avatar
otitov
XCore Addict
Posts: 207
Joined: Thu Dec 10, 2009 11:00 pm
Location: Mexico
Contact:

Post by otitov »

point taken!

what about a 7x7 with one core doing hypervisor? (i am not serious, just guessing)
User avatar
Andy
Respected Member
Posts: 279
Joined: Fri Dec 11, 2009 1:34 pm

Post by Andy »

This photo seems to suggest it's 8x6:

http://insidehpc.com/images/12042009/48core.jpg
User avatar
otitov
XCore Addict
Posts: 207
Joined: Thu Dec 10, 2009 11:00 pm
Location: Mexico
Contact:

Post by otitov »

ok, i feel that "48" mystery case is solved.

p.s. so they pack more cores on same silicon 2D die. when they will pack them in 3D, e.g multilayer?
User avatar
shawn
XCore Addict
Posts: 238
Joined: Thu Dec 17, 2009 5:15 am

Post by shawn »

Nupga is packing 3d, Tabula is packing 3d and someelse is packing a 4d spacetime thing.
I don't think this Intel chip is mobile to me its just another Intel knock-off like the I-tanic.
We'll just have to wait an see how ChipZilla plays its deal.
Post Reply