48-core Intel Processor

[Welshman25]

Just found this and thought you fellow basement dwellers would enjoy it.

http://www.pcworld.com/businesscente...fficiency.html

Looks like Intel has managed to cram 48 cores onto a single chip. But the amazing part is the power management. It's essentially a chip with 12 quad cores on it that uses the power of a single quad core.

[Douchebag]

48 cores!? WTF. are those for supercomputers or something?

[Jaketh]

48 cores!? WTF. are those for supercomputers or something?

i had intel make one for me, then i had Crytek re code all my games to run on all cores

[Sidmen]

Too bad games won't take advantage of quad-core processors till we're working on the 128 core processor.

[Capt. Fozdike]

Woah!! That's awesome!! *Rings intel and asks them to make one for me*

[Leon the Shrubber]

I'd hit that.

[Simetrical]

They made 100 of these chips, and each of the 48 cores uses at max 125 watt, so that is 6000 watts at maximum power consumption. That is not the equivalent of a standard quad core by any standard.

I'm pretty sure it's 125 W for the whole thing, not per core.

This is really not so surprising at all if you think about it. We are getting to the point that making CPUs smaller is going to be pretty hard. The tracks between transistors that carry the information are already incredibly small. I think the last number I read was .08 microns or some similarly insane number. That allows them to put millions of transistors on a single chip.

But how small can they realistically go? Its not just a matter of size, but the cost to produce that size and the heat it generates.

The distance between atoms in a substance is typically around a tenth of a nanometer. Chip fabrication is down to something like 10 nm, so a hundred atoms wide or so. There are inevitable limits as you start to get close to the atomic level, and we're very close.

[GrnEyedDvl]

I'm pretty sure it's 125 W for the whole thing, not per core.

It is.

The distance between atoms in a substance is typically around a tenth of a nanometer. Chip fabrication is down to something like 10 nm, so a hundred atoms wide or so. There are inevitable limits as you start to get close to the atomic level, and we're very close.

Yes we are very close, which is why I like to read the stories on quantum computing occasionally. Unless someone comes up with a better idea I think that has to be the next big jump.

[Simetrical]

This is still experimental, and targeted at big datacenters, not gamers.

[wupwup]

yeah its part of a supercomputer. there is another ariticle about it (or a similar product. maybe nividias grf card that works with it acturaly) but yeah. cool stuff

[Timefool]

They made 100 of these chips, and each of the 48 cores uses at max 125 watt, so that is 6000 watts at maximum power consumption. That is not the equivalent of a standard quad core by any standard.

[GrnEyedDvl]

This is really not so surprising at all if you think about it. We are getting to the point that making CPUs smaller is going to be pretty hard. The tracks between transistors that carry the information are already incredibly small. I think the last number I read was .08 microns or some similarly insane number. That allows them to put millions of transistors on a single chip.

But how small can they realistically go? Its not just a matter of size, but the cost to produce that size and the heat it generates. With current cooling they still need to attach a heat sink and a fan, so while making a chip the size of a pencil lead may be possible, you are kind of defeating the purpose if you have to have a fan the size of a Coke can to cool it and you drive the cost out of reach. Also there is the connection points to consider, the pins. If you make them too small, they will not be strong enough to withstand normal handling and insertion. They will have to design a new interface.

Its always easier to go bigger, so why not make the size of the card the CPUs sit on a little bigger, and just add more CPUs to it? The TWC server is a bit of an example when it comes to this.

We have 4 quad core CPUs, for a total of 16 (Socket F). Each chip is slightly bigger than a standard AM2/AM3 chip, but also has 1207 pins versus 938 and 941. The cooler for these is about 3 times the area needed for the chip itself. Since we are in a 1U case its a fanless cooler so it needs to be wider instead of taller, and air from other fans (12 microfans) blows across them through a sort of wind tunnel. The cooler is here, and as you can see its 114 mm long and 74 mm wide, far larger than the chip itself.

For connection points they use the land grid array, in which the pins are on the motherboard itself and the CPU just has little round spots the pins line up on. Intel uses the same method for their server processors. Image below:




When it comes to servers, which this new Intel processor is designed for, space is always a huge factor. They absolutely have to keep the cooling requirements within a predefined set of standards already in use the world over. The rack standards are so ingrained in companies that forcing a change would be very hard and also very expensive.

Its cheaper to add more cores using current technology than it is to make the cores smaller and faster. That pic of the Opteron processor is a pretty good example, thats a 6 core processor that is the same size as our 4 core processors, and uses the same heat sink. Its about $1500 which is out of TWCs price range, especially when you consider we would need 4 of them, but its well within the budget of an actual business that needs that much processing power. If you were trying to build a single core chip that could do the same amount of work, it would probably cost $50,000 - $75,000 per CPU.