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64 Comments
- ThugEsquire, on 10/12/2007, -1/+27No, but I did stay at a Holiday Inn Express last night.
- dongiaconia, on 10/12/2007, -4/+19When do we get 128 cores? So that we can break RSA encryption in a couple days...
- sishgupta, on 10/12/2007, -2/+13What can i say, it seems rather useless. Much like 2gb of ram was utterly useless 15 years ago.
There may be a time when 48 cores are rocking my desktop, but it isnt now. Maybe us northerners can use it to heat our homes in the winter though. - sishgupta, on 10/12/2007, -2/+11If this was slashdot, one might be reading the obligatory:
"Imagine a beowulf cluster of these!" - mofomojo, on 10/12/2007, -5/+11lol @ civilians, what are you? A general?!
- Bleek-II, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6Digg has been acting cazy of late. It doesn't show you dupes before submit stuff as well.
- dvdcr, on 10/12/2007, -1/+7that quote is false, it never existed, so please stop using that *****
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -1/+7i still like the sun solution: 8 cores x each 4 way hyper-threaded x 1.2ghz each = 32 or so virtual processor each at 1.2 ghz = one damn fast solaris box...
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -1/+6Indeed. I don't think this will be directly affecting us anytime soon.
"Its a supercomputer AND furnace at the same time!!!" - kenz0r, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5dont forget the 90,000 rpm 500 petabyte HD
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -3/+7Not only that, but there's no bus that could handle that kind of throughput on a single motherboard.
Methinks this is just corporate dick-waving to try and make a name for themselves. - theduke01, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5You guys aren't looking at this the right way. I bet 95% of you could use this sort of power right NOW. There's no real need for a radical revolution in software.
Many problems are straightforward to parallelize. Certainly not all, but things such as MP3 ripping, video conversion, ray tracing, 3D modeling, photo image processing, can all be broken down into smaller chunks and sent to different threads.
When you start to think about how cheap raw storage is too (< $400 currently and dropping by a factor of 2 every 12 months), start to think about the huge data that will need to be saved with HD TV and so forth, people are going to want the processing power to edit these sort of things in real time.
Even modest scientific applications in biotechnology, weather forecasting, drug development, finance etc... are STARVED for processing power.
There's a HUGE market out there for this. Even if it doesn't run Windows yet, Linux would be fine for the short term. - ThugEsquire, on 10/12/2007, -6/+10I love how people are always glamourising random startups' new products, which will never hit the civilian market, and will never run Windows or OS X.
- b4k4, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3You gotta have the right perspective when looking at these kind of things. Many of you I'm sure are seeing this and automatically thinking desktop, which is the kind of hardware you're accustom to seeing and using. But as a few people have stated this is most likely NOT intended for desktop use, but enterprise/supercomputer use, which would make complete sense. Looking at it from that vantage point makes this actually seem kinda cool
It's all about perspective - trogdor282, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3shyshock, IBM is making something similar to this, a Cell on steroids, so it's gotta be feasible
- SgnDave, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4Thus, we need chips with dozens of cores to figre out how to program them.
- merreborn, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4It's worth noting that this is a non-x86 compatible processor.
They've already released a 24 core version.
the Cyclops64 project is working on an 80 core processor.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyclops64
And no, this won't run windows. It's targeted at the supercomputer market. - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+35 mile island
- nucleocide, on 10/12/2007, -2/+5Why not just take one of the pre-cut huge ass silicon wafers, solder a couple wires to it, and toss that into a case?
- olegk, on 10/12/2007, -2/+5It's because you are not doing any serious work. I would love to have 48 cores, so photoshop can process images in parallel, that would be awesome. There are lots of applications that can benefit from it - from real time ray tracing (imagine how game industry would change) to protein folding, to cheap and powerful web servers, all on your home PC.
- colincsl, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4Ones right now are around 600mhz I think. My dad got a 96-way recently and apparently they're really nice. However (like others have said), this isn't somehting any of us will be using.
- gamekid, on 10/12/2007, -2/+5***** perspective--gimme my 48-core desktop NOW! ;)
- oepapel, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3"With todays development tools, 48 cores would be useless. That would require no less than a complete revolution in how software is developed. hint hint, it aint gonna happen in the next couple of years."
Modern Operating System have hundreds of threads going at any given time. Check your Windows XP box. Right now on my machine, there are 43 processes, and 421 threads running. And I'm not doing much, either. OS/X and Linux will have similar numbers. The fact that most of them are idle is the only reason we can get any work done at all.
A 24 or 48 core chip doesn't sound so crazy now, does it? Especially because those cores are nowhere as powerful as the cores in a Core Duo. Just imagine if there were 48 cores and 43 were idle. That would mean that the chip is basically using 10% of it's computing capacity and can respond instantly to demand. Need more performance? Photoshop can use 2 or 4 or 8 cores instead of 1 and the system would STILL be responsive enough to download your email in the background and run indexing software.
Today's systems feel sluggish after adding a realtime virus scanner, a firewall, a realtime spyware checker, a video transcoder background process, a couple of programs in the system tray looking to keep themselves up to date and file indexing software. Tomorrow's systems will have much more running in the background at all times.
We will eventually move away from the idea that the current program needs to monopolize 100% of the system resources in order to be performance oriented. That includes cores. - wilsonsd, on 10/12/2007, -2/+5Azul doens't make general purpose processors (like you'd use in your desktop). It's network attached CPU power for running server-side Java applications.
For another approach to driving up utilization on your server side Java apps you should check out Cassatt.
http://www.cassatt.com/
-Steve - theblackgecko, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3Wonder if any northern campus has been smart enough to use computers for heating, and nature for cooling. Nothing like -40 degrees of cooling from the ambient temperature at the University of Alaksa - Fairbanks!
- centinall, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4Forgive me if I'm misunderstanding something, but isn't this for the Enterprise and not the desktop (not that you don't make some valid points). However, when talking about an Enterprise solution, we're talking about multiple application containers each running multiple applications. I can see how this would be very useful.
- Leadhyena, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4It's not that simple... if you have 128 cores you're only going to have 128 times the speed. To crack a 128-bit key by brute-force you have to try 2^128 combinations, which would take you pretty much the age of the universe to crack. The issue is that it's exponential growth, not polynomial. So a 128-core processor would take maybe 1/100th the age of the universe instead of the age of the universe to crack with today's tech.
And even if it were possible to crack 128-bit keys in time, just double the number of bits and you're secure again until the tech catches up. - SgnDave, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3You have a very accurate point. But consider this... when you actually start to need 48 cores on the desktop, how will anyone know how to develop for it? It's not a problem that is easily solved with simple multithreading, OS improvements, or compiler optimizations. The fact that a 48 core processor is available now just means that there is a viable model for the way that we're (probably) going to do things in the future.
I went to a talk by David Patterson, the author of "the" book on quantitative computer architecture design, and he believes (as many other people who "know" do) that multi-core is the future. Not two or four, or 48, but potentially thousands of "cores" in one computer (think server). - oepapel, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2"It's not trivial to program a 48-core machine efficiently."
Only if you are assuming that there is only one program running. As a server, a machine like this would have a tremendous ability to scale. Think of it as a cluster in a box. That's where it starts to get interesting. No need to spend network, memory and disk resources keeping a cluster of machines in sync. No delays as changes propagate through the cluster. Instead of a few hundred machines in a cluster, you could have a few dozen 48-core machines instead. Just think of all the rack space you would save.
If you would rather think in terms of graphics, imagine a rendering farm of these machines. Or how about a video server capable of transcoding 1080p video to a dozen different formats simultaneously and in real time?
In each case, no new software needs to be written from scratch to take advantage of these machines. The system would just scale better than any existing cluster. - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -2/+4With todays development tools, 48 cores would be useless. That would require no less than a complete revolution in how software is developed. hint hint, it aint gonna happen in the next couple of years.
- rideagain, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Yup, not in the next couple years. But what about 2012?
http://www.cs.utexas.edu/~trips/overview.html
They are working on a new architecture and new development tools to go with it. They are expecting a prototype delivered this summer (32 cores if I'm counting right). - SirNuke, on 10/12/2007, -2/+4Not if they are all 16mhz. Not saying that the 48-core chip plans to have cores that slow...
- Arkz, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1If i can play Wolfenstien 3D in 10240x7680 on it il buy it, they just need to invent the SSSUXGA Monitor now
- hayden.evans, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1yeah sure but you probably will never see this in a home computer any time soon. But you might see 8 soon. My uncle that works for dell heard news that Intel have made plans for 8 core chip, more likely to appear in a home computer than a 48 core chip.
- ewright, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2Even if this product is not going to hit the consumer market anytime soon it is still interesting to see what is on the horizon. With the direction the Internet is moving these days (many applications going online). More powerful server technology may affect our lives and day to day computing than a substantial increase in consumer processor power.
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -2/+3Um, why are you commenting that it is a dupe? This is the first story of its kind to make front page, therfore you can't complain. And if its really bugging you, use the 'Report Duplicate' button.
- geminitojanus, on 10/12/2007, -0/+148 cores * 4 threads per core = 192 instructions in flight (assuming in-order; out-of-order with pipelining could have several hundred instructions in flight with short pipelines). I shouldn't have to tell you how much raw computing power that is.
(As an example, however, the leading super-computer with the best PovRAY score was built at UK; http://aggregate.org/KLAT2/ , which utilized 128 Athlon XP 2600 s at 2.075GHz a piece, a computer built with 16 of the above cores could do the same render in less than 1/4th of the time assuming the same latencies all around. see the Slashdot article about it here: http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/08/23/1337228&mode=thread&tid=126&tid=142&tid=187 ). - geminitojanus, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1"Not only that, but there's no bus that could handle that kind of throughput on a single motherboard. "
*****. Think serial. Besides, with that absurd number of processing cores, you can reduce bus speeds by large amounts and still get several times the thoroughput of current computers.
Just don't expect it to be useful for much outside of video en/decoding (perhaps gaming). - EsotericBoredom, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1At the current rate of develop in quantum mechanics we will probably see a "Heisenberg compensator" before a true quantum processor.
- RyeBrye, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1I would comment on this post... about how 48 cores would be so much better than dual/quad cores... but suddenly I have forgotten them... So I have no point of reference... HELP!
- datagod, on 10/12/2007, -1/+248 Cores? How much can eac core do? 48 x not much = ??
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1I'll be impressed with their 48 core CPU when I see their new motherboard architecture implemented. You have to design an efficient way for those 48 cores to communicate with each other and the system or else you are going to have a severe bottleneck.
- merreborn, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1The processor layout and especially the interconnect topology are vastly different.
"A couple of wires" is more like a few thousand.
Oh, and you'd have all sorts of timing issues. The time it takes light to get from one end of the "big wafer" to the other is _very_ long when you're dealing with processors that operate hundreds of millions of times per second. - Mongoose, on 10/12/2007, -2/+3Wow. The exciting part is that in a number of years we'll have these things under our desks.
I wonder if it can run Doom 3? :P - kenz0r, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2hahahaha, love the Holiday Inn comment
- milcrat, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0I think the problem is not how many cores you can fit. It's more an issue of how is someone going to program it. It's not trivial to program a 48-core machine efficiently.
- pratman, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1What's the heat output from that thing?
- thinkdrastic, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0I'm looking at it and thinking PDA / mobile phone / Gameboy ;-)
- rs, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Will it run *Lisp like a Connection Machine? That would be tres cool... a mini-tower CM-2a, implemented with today's technology and today's speeds... wheee!
- NeutrinoTau, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Of course the Ultimate answer will be Quantum Computing with its ability to have massive numbers of processes operating simultaneously. With quantum computers, one qubit represents 2 numbers at the same time 1 and 0. two gives you the four numbers 00,01,10,11. 3 gives you 8 and so on growing exponentially. With 100, you have 1E33 simultaneous numbers represented and worked with. But unfortunately, they are at least several years off but even without quantum computers you can get a lot done. Just look at super computers. Cray offers computers with quad-core processors. (in top system X1E) 8 CPU's and 32 GB RDRAM per compute module, 16 modules per liquid cooled cabinet, and up to 64 cabinets. your gaming machine would most likely complete a simple problem in noticeably less time but the cray can get years worth of number crunching done in that same slower amount of time. And the thing is that even that cray is not enough for weather forecasting today. forecasters have more data than they can handle but nothing can actually process all of it in time for an up to date forecast.
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