‘Single Chip Cloud Computer’ will be available to 100 plus outside agencies in 2010.

48-core chip sucks in less power than pair of light bulbs.

 Intel’s Chief Technology Officer Justin Ratner was in Bangalore Wednesday to unveil the company’s latest research product, a single sliver of silicon that contained 48 separate computing cores, each roughly as powerful as the Atom processor. Called the Single-chip Cloud Computer or SCC, because like a Cloud data centre, the chip organises itself to sharply cut down power consumption ( less than 40 watts)  and heat, the experimental product saw key development in Intel’s Bangalore lab, in partnership with its R&D Labs in Braunschweig (Germany) and Hillsboro, Ore. (U.S.) The company’s release says:
“Researchers in India led the circuit/physical design of the IA core, memory controller logic and the mesh interconnect network. This included implementing synthesis/custom circuits on Intel’s 45nm process technology, validating the functionality and performance verification of the design. The critical logic and physical design expertise of the team allowed Intel labs to build a full microprocessor quickly without the need to iterate through the full fabrication process multiple times, as is typical for microprocessor products.” Ratner suggested commercial roll out might be 4 to 5 years away, but to kickstart applications, Intel plans on making 100 plus units available to academics and industry from early 2010.

Vasantha Erraguntla, Senior Engineering Manager Intel Labs India said “The single-chip cloud computer was designed as a concept vehicle for parallel software research. We believe this is an ideal research platform to help accelerate many-core software research and advanced development. Coming on the heels of the successful 80-core Teraflop processor, we knew we had to get this one right on the first go. The complexity of this chip is multi-fold, with a much larger die size, system level complexities and challenges of 45nm physical design. The belief of the global team in our capabilities and the dedication displayed by the team at the Bangalore labs enabled us to build this research prototype successfully and take us yet another step forward in the Tera-scale journey”.

Her team demonstrated applications where the 6 separate work areas of the chip with 8 processors each, addressed made mincemeat of complex business analytical and weather modelling problems.
Bangalore Dec 16 2009

( We have a video on the new chip in our video slot for a few days)