Intel's 48-core megachip - redefining software and human interface

Researchers at Intel Labs have demonstrated an experimental, 48-core Intel processor, or "single-chip cloud computer," that rethinks many of the approaches used in today's designs for laptops, PCs and servers. What else does it redefine?

Intel's 48-core chip boasts 10 to 20 times the processing power of today's popular Intel Core branded processors. Add to that incredible scaling features and you have future computers that spur entirely new software applications and human-machine interfaces to the extent of, Intel says, the elimination of keyboards, remote controls or joysticks for gaming.

Nicknamed "single-chip cloud computer", the chip resembles the organization of datacenters used to create a "cloud" of computing resources over the Internet, on a single piece of Intel 45nm, high-k metal-gate silicon about the size of a postage stamp.

Though it acknowledges that programming processors with multiple cores is a well-known challenge, Intel believes the prototype allows popular and efficient parallel programming approaches from current cloud datacenter software can be applied to the chip. Its researchers, along with others from HP and Yahoo's Open Cirrus collaboration have commenced porting cloud applications to this 48-IA core chip using Hadoop, a Java software framework supporting data-intensive, distributed applications. Dan Reed, Microsoft's corporate vice president of Extreme Computing said Microsoft, too, is partnering with Intel to explore new hardware and software architectures supporting next-generation client plus cloud applications.

With 48-cores and an on-chip information-sharing network, the chip boasts just-invented power management techniques that allow all 48 cores to operate extremely energy efficiently, using as little as 25 watts or 125 watts when running at maximum performance. That is equivalent of today's Intel processors and just two standard household light bulbs. Around a 100 of these would be shared with industry and academia sometime next year for hands-on research in developing new software applications and programming models.

For now, Intel plans to market a new line of Core-branded chips early next year and introduce six-core and eight-core processors sometime in 2010.