Intel shows off CPU with 48 cores

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12-02-2009, 01:20 PM
Olivon

Intel shows off CPU with 48 cores

Quote:

Intel researchers have created an experimental many-core processor with 48 cores. The so-called single-chip cloud computer (SCC) features 24 dual-core tiles with 384KB L2 cache per core and is made on a 45nm HKMG process

The SCC chip features four integrated DDR3 memory controllers, there's one memory controller per six tiles and they can address up to 64GB DDR3 memory. The two cores on each tile communicate through a message buffer, and routers allow each tile to share data with other tiles. Also interesting is the power-efficient design, each tile can run at a different frequency and there are six banks of four tiles that can run at different voltages.

The 48-core chip features a total of 1.3 billion transistors and measures 567 square millimeters, power consumption is said to be between 25W and 125W. Intel said about 100 or more of these experimental chips will be made for research facilities, with the goal of developing new software and programming models for the many-core future.

Intel PDF

http://tof.canardpc.com/view/ddff10d...5df77b944c.jpg

http://tof.canardpc.com/view/5bf4e9a...9539e43356.jpg

Credits : DVHardware

Edit : Intel Video
12-02-2009, 01:26 PM
BulldogPO

Very interesting find.
12-02-2009, 05:03 PM
DMH

Is it just me or do I see 4 8-pin EPS connected to that motherboard?
Great chip by the way
12-02-2009, 05:39 PM
Serpentarius

that's a real low power consumption ... just 25-125W to power this monster
wonder when will be the time they stop experimenting it and release it to mainstream?

or maybe after the military and juice up their goodies? :D
12-02-2009, 05:40 PM
haylui

again, age old question: x86 compatible?
12-02-2009, 06:04 PM
IvanAndreevich

Quote:

Originally Posted by haylui

again, age old question: x86 compatible?

Yes, it says so in the PDF. They call it by the IA-32 name.

Anyone know what kind of cores they are, though? Maybe something like Yonah shrunk to 45 nm.
12-02-2009, 06:08 PM
Buckeye

I can see Movieman going nuts over this, shoot I would be also :rofl:

A Dual CPU motherboard for 96 cores ... Wait Movieman prolly has this allready LOL !
12-02-2009, 06:14 PM
Chumbucket843

Quote:

Originally Posted by IvanAndreevich

Yes, it says so in the PDF. They call it by the IA-32 name.

Anyone know what kind of cores they are, though? Maybe something like Yonah shrunk to 45 nm.

no way. these are much different from modern cpu's. its a much more efficient use of transistors. probably more similar to p5 generation.
12-02-2009, 06:31 PM
haylui

I read the news in Tom's hardware
Intel's spokesmen said it as if it would definitely bringing revolutionary changes in very short time...LOLz..what an article
12-02-2009, 06:54 PM
Mechromancer

Maybe it can fold 6 F@H Big work units, 56,000PPD each. That would be neat.
12-02-2009, 08:52 PM
Mabyboi

:sofa: waits for movieman to somehow get one of these before the general public... or two... :sofa:
12-02-2009, 09:59 PM
Unoid

guys this is just LRB in disguise.
12-02-2009, 10:02 PM
Movieman

Quote:

Originally Posted by Buckeye

I can see Movieman going nuts over this, shoot I would be also :rofl:

A Dual CPU motherboard for 96 cores ... Wait Movieman prolly has this allready LOL !

SHHHHHHH! Don't tell everyone. Working on it!:p:
12-02-2009, 10:21 PM
JumpingJack

Quote:

Originally Posted by Buckeye

I can see Movieman going nuts over this, shoot I would be also :rofl:

A Dual CPU motherboard for 96 cores ... Wait Movieman prolly has this allready LOL !

:) Don't get too excited, from the press release it is purely a research vehicle. Perhaps, in time, it will evolve into something but for now it is just a show thingy.
12-02-2009, 10:27 PM
Neuromancer

Quote:

Originally Posted by DMH

Is it just me or do I see 4 8-pin EPS connected to that motherboard?
Great chip by the way

I only see 2 but most servers have an extra MB socket for powering the vdimms.
12-02-2009, 10:29 PM
Movieman

Quote:

Originally Posted by JumpingJack

:) Don't get too excited, from the press release it is purely a research vehicle. Perhaps, in time, it will evolve into something but for now it is just a show thingy.

That's what you think!
We already found a place with one and trying to con them, I mean show them the potentials of the system under stressed scientific research in a dynamic envirionment under real world conditions.

yea, I can toss BS with the best of them if needed.:rofl:
12-03-2009, 12:45 AM
dartaz

Only 567 square millimeters ? Thats really small for an 48 core processor made on 45nm process

With 32nm or 22nm die shrink, intel could easily sell those at reasonable price for desktop users
12-03-2009, 12:54 AM
Helmore

Quote:

Originally Posted by dartaz

Only 567 square millimeters ? Thats really small for an 48 core processor made on 45nm process

With 32nm or 22nm die shrink, intel could easily sell those at reasonable price for desktop users

Really small? That chip has a lower transistor density than NVIDIA's GT200 on 65 nm, while the chip is build on a 45 nm process. I guess CPUs have much different needs and they actually prefer lower densities to allow for higher performance transistors. Or they are performing some kind of magic over at ATI, as they seem to have some crazy transistor densities.
12-03-2009, 03:05 AM
zsamz_

i wonder what movieman would trade or do for that cpu:rofl:
time to sell your soul:ROTF:
12-03-2009, 03:18 AM
Helmore

Quote:

Originally Posted by zsamz_

i wonder what movieman would trade or do for that cpu:rofl:
time to sell your soul:ROTF:

I guess selling a part of his soul shouldn't be too hard for Movieman. His soul would quickly regenerate because of his enthusiasm for folding ;).
12-03-2009, 03:38 AM
zalbard

That's one huge chip, 567mm^2...
But 125W max? Really hard to believe this... What was the frequency? 500MHz?
12-03-2009, 04:17 AM
Mabyboi

Quote:

Originally Posted by zalbard

That's one huge chip, 567mm^2...
But 125W max? Really hard to believe this... What was the frequency? 500MHz?

Is that before or after overclocking? :rolleyes:
12-03-2009, 04:28 AM
XS Janus

Quote:

Originally Posted by zsamz_

i wonder what movieman would trade or do for that cpu:rofl:
time to sell your soul:ROTF:

I wonder if he has anything left to trade for it anymore...:D
Unless he was born with like 6 kidneys, I think he traded everything he's got! :D
12-03-2009, 06:27 AM
Serra

From BBC Article: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/8392392.stm

Quote:

Originally Posted by BBC

Intel said the SCC would be made officially available during the first half of 2010. More details will be released at the International Solid-State Circuits Conference in San Francisco on 8 February, 2010.

H1 2010?! Holy :banana::banana::banana::banana:!
12-03-2009, 06:30 AM
ajaidev

Quote:

Originally Posted by Serra

From BBC Article: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/8392392.stm

H1 2010?! Holy :banana::banana::banana::banana:!

Waaatttt wwwwwoww :shocked:

:banana::banana::banana:

Almost forgot http://www.brightsideofnews.com/news...cloud-cpu.aspx
12-04-2009, 08:32 AM
saaya

mhhhh id place this between the 80core prototype and LRB... its odd this thing pops up now though... isnt it going to directly compete with LRB? :confused:
12-04-2009, 08:37 AM
Manicdan

does intel really need to be designing 3 chips that all do about the same thing, even though they havnt tested the market with just one.
12-04-2009, 08:56 AM
Hornet331

Quote:

Originally Posted by saaya

mhhhh id place this between the 80core prototype and LRB... its odd this thing pops up now though... isnt it going to directly compete with LRB? :confused:

why should it?

Its a research chip, something you might see in a different shape 4-5 years or maybe never.
12-04-2009, 10:01 AM
Otis11

If i were to make a guess... I'd say it was made to help look at ways of inter core communications and different cache sharing set ups as they realized the methods used in larrabee are not scalable to exceedingly large numbers of cores...

:wasntme:
12-04-2009, 10:27 AM
kl0012

Quote:

Originally Posted by saaya

mhhhh id place this between the 80core prototype and LRB... its odd this thing pops up now though... isnt it going to directly compete with LRB? :confused:

Those are very different things. LRB has shared cache and very wide vector unit. Also LRB implements posix threading architecture and its programming model is not different from the programming model of any multicore cpu. On the other side the subject cpu is a cluster on chip and it needs some sort of cluster software to work effectivelly. Also, probably, it doesn't have vector unit (not sure if it has FPU at all) because the main destination for such cpu is integer (data base) server workloads.
12-05-2009, 06:58 AM
BlindFreddie

See Also: http://news.cnet.com/8301-30685_3-10407818-264.html

Quote: Intel on Wednesday demonstrated a fully programmable 48-core processor it thinks will pave the way for massive data computers powerful enough to do more of what humans can.
Neural-network-like simulations, perhaps. Robotics?

I think these CPUs do have floating-point: In the PDF is a slide titled "SCC Demo Showcase" (p11) showing "Javascript Physics Modeling". I can't imagine them showing that off if the chip didn't have hardware FP capability.

Quote: Rattner said that SCC's 48 IA-32 [Intel Architecture, 32-bit] cores are simple, in-order designs and not sophisticated out-of-order processors.
So they are probably based on PII or P3 (or Atom?) architecture . But this is just an experimental chip designed to let potential users play with its many-core and inter-core communications capabilities and to suggest and try novel applications, rather than to have lots of raw processing power. That could be added later if the concept of the chip is viable.

Meanwhile, it looks like it is already a great thing for grid computing (http://www.worldcommunitygrid.org). The parallel-processing software is there already, and Linux has had multi-CPU capability for up to 1024 processors for a while now. Go, MovieMan, Go !! http://www.mysmiley.net/imgs/smile/a...animal0019.gif
12-05-2009, 08:36 AM
Nedjo

IA32? hmm... how did I missed that? Cool so we have 4-channel, 48-core monster that can address no more than 4 gigs of RAM... sweet!
12-05-2009, 08:55 AM
Otis11

They are 48 "atom-like" cores... And iirc their new way of inter-core communication allows for more than 4GB (does not behave like the chips before it)
12-06-2009, 04:48 AM
amdinside

Oh, no, I hate it. It is still x86 :mad:
I expected something much more interesting.
And it IA-32 (32 bit).

Just strange ideas...
12-06-2009, 05:13 AM
Levish

with 4x memory controllers, I might be wrong but I think it could access 4x4GB and somehow split the ram among the cores evenly
12-06-2009, 05:52 AM
Movieman

Quote:

Originally Posted by Buckeye

I can see Movieman going nuts over this, shoot I would be also :rofl:

A Dual CPU motherboard for 96 cores ... Wait Movieman prolly has this allready LOL !

Quote:

Originally Posted by MaByBoI

:sofa: waits for movieman to somehow get one of these before the general public... or two... :sofa:

Quote:

Originally Posted by zsamz_

i wonder what movieman would trade or do for that cpu:rofl:
time to sell your soul:ROTF:

Quote:

Originally Posted by Helmore

I guess selling a part of his soul shouldn't be too hard for Movieman. His soul would quickly regenerate because of his enthusiasm for folding ;).

Quote:

Originally Posted by XS Janus

I wonder if he has anything left to trade for it anymore...:D
Unless he was born with like 6 kidneys, I think he traded everything he's got! :D

I requested one two days ago.
I wonder if they are still laughing?
Also I get the feeling that what they are setting up is requests for software usage where you do a remote login to the machine that stays at their facility and you "try" your software on it..
I asked for a machine instead to see how it works in the real world
I wonder if Franck could write a clockgen for something like this?..:rofl:
12-06-2009, 07:54 AM
Otis11

Quote:

Originally Posted by Movieman

I requested one two days ago.
I wonder if they are still laughing?
Also I get the feeling that what they are setting up is requests for software usage where you do a remote login to the machine that stays at their facility and you "try" your software on it..
I asked for a machine instead to see how it works in the real world
I wonder if Franck could write a clockgen for something like this?..:rofl:

In your request you made sure to mention that the XS community would be working on real-world stress evaluation and looking into the scaling and compatibility of certain programs who's creators frequent XS... right? :up:
12-07-2009, 01:21 AM
BlindFreddie

Quote:

Also I get the feeling that what they are setting up is requests for software usage where you do a remote login to the machine that stays at their facility and you "try" your software on it..

Great! So log in, install BOINC, and let her rip 24/7. And they pay the electricity bills :rofl:
12-07-2009, 03:20 AM
Xoulz

Quote:

Originally Posted by BlindFreddie

See Also: http://news.cnet.com/8301-30685_3-10407818-264.html

Quote: Intel on Wednesday demonstrated a fully programmable 48-core processor it thinks will pave the way for massive data computers powerful enough to do more of what humans can.
Neural-network-like simulations, perhaps. Robotics?

I think these CPUs do have floating-point: In the PDF is a slide titled "SCC Demo Showcase" (p11) showing "Javascript Physics Modeling". I can't imagine them showing that off if the chip didn't have hardware FP capability.

Quote: Rattner said that SCC's 48 IA-32 [Intel Architecture, 32-bit] cores are simple, in-order designs and not sophisticated out-of-order processors.
So they are probably based on PII or P3 (or Atom?) architecture . But this is just an experimental chip designed to let potential users play with its many-core and inter-core communications capabilities and to suggest and try novel applications, rather than to have lots of raw processing power. That could be added later if the concept of the chip is viable.

Meanwhile, it looks like it is already a great thing for grid computing (http://www.worldcommunitygrid.org). The parallel-processing software is there already, and Linux has had multi-CPU capability for up to 1024 processors for a while now. Go, MovieMan, Go !! http://www.mysmiley.net/imgs/smile/a...animal0019.gif

^^...

Andriod <---

Give me 7 more years..! I'll have two of these cooking me dinner when I get home for work! Then a back rub!

Plus, I can tell the b!tch to protein fold when i'm sleeping. Really.. why not?
12-07-2009, 11:18 AM
hyc

Hmmm. The problems that are interesting to solve with 48 CPUs (to me at least) require more RAM than a 32 bit processor can address. This makes for a very limited development / research machine...
12-07-2009, 11:27 AM
Movieman

Quote:

Originally Posted by Hornet331

why should it?

Its a research chip, something you might see in a different shape 4-5 years or maybe never.

Exactly, and many people miss this.
Companies, at least the smart ones, don't put "all their eggs in one basket"
They work on competing technologies to find the best ones.
This may be a niche product but from my perspective for DC work and many other types of work it could be a heck of an answer to what we do as electrical cost is one of the major issues we deal with.
12-07-2009, 11:31 AM
Levish

Quote:

Originally Posted by hyc

Hmmm. The problems that are interesting to solve with 48 CPUs (to me at least) require more RAM than a 32 bit processor can address. This makes for a very limited development / research machine...

with 4 memory controllers I'm guessing you get 4GB of ram for a bunch (12) of cores?
12-07-2009, 11:37 AM
Movieman

Quote:

Originally Posted by Levish

with 4 memory controllers I'm guessing you get 4GB of ram for a bunch (12) of cores?

Now that makes more sense than anything else I've read..good call.:up:
12-07-2009, 11:51 AM
Nedjo

Quote:

Originally Posted by Levish

with 4 memory controllers I'm guessing you get 4GB of ram for a bunch (12) of cores?

it makes no difference if you have 4 memory controllers, or 4-channel memory controller! You can't address more than 4 gigs on IA32 x86 CPU!
12-07-2009, 12:11 PM
Movieman

Quote:

Originally Posted by Nedjo

it makes no difference if you have 4 memory controllers, or 4-channel memory controller! You can't address more than 4 gigs on IA32 x86 CPU!

I don't doubt that BUT just think for a minute: Does it make common sense that a company would create a 48 core machine with that memory limit?
I don't have an answer but that just doesn't make sense to me.:confused:
12-07-2009, 12:49 PM
Olivon

http://tof.canardpc.com/view/3332ad2...73822d1625.jpg

They talk about 64GB DRAM DDR3 on the PDF
12-07-2009, 03:49 PM
hyc

Then I sense the re-use of segment registers. Or the RAM is divided among cores, not shared...
12-07-2009, 11:44 PM
Behemot

Many core concept is something Intel is working on for a long time now. Didn't remember the 80core@1.26TFLOPS running 4 GHz on 65nm CMOS? The problem is data throughput for all those cores, it is just impossible to feed them all now. Also 64 GB of memory is too low even for "just" 48 cores. But they continue working. I am looking forward to another version, this time 32nm :)

What is the performance of this one like?
12-08-2009, 04:15 AM
Hornet331

^
above one teraflop.
12-08-2009, 07:14 AM
Nikolasz

Tech grows on eachday...
09-21-2010, 06:12 AM
Olivon

http://tof.canardpc.com/view/272dd5b...af8a934c2a.jpg

Revamped ...

http://tof.canardpc.com/preview2/e62...1f5a816947.jpg

http://tof.canardpc.com/preview2/c2d...e566d6603a.jpg

ComputerBase
09-21-2010, 07:20 AM
ajaidev

^ If this is the same version/revision i am working with then it will have a central big die and two small rectangular ones on each side of the big die. The thing is very powerful and it already runs ray tracing almost across the board "Scaling is ok will be better soon"
09-22-2010, 04:31 AM
XSAlliN

Quote:

Originally Posted by Serpentarius

that's a real low power consumption ... just 25-125W to power this monster
wonder when will be the time they stop experimenting it and release it to mainstream?

or maybe after the military and juice up their goodies? :D

Compared to some Video Cards it's acceptable for what it represents (a High-End CPU).
09-22-2010, 08:08 AM
Hornet331

^ lol u still mad...
09-22-2010, 08:13 AM
Movieman

I wonder if it would run windows and WCG?
Even if the cores are slow at 1.6GHz there are 48 of them.
That's a total of 76,800MHz..on 125w?:rofl:
09-22-2010, 08:20 AM
ajaidev

Quote:

Originally Posted by Movieman

I wonder if it would run windows and WCG?
Even if the cores are slow at 1.6GHz there are 48 of them.
That's a total of 76,800MHz..on 125w?:rofl:

It does not run windows "At least the version i and 13 other people are working with does not" the x86 programs have to be modified to run and scale properly. The good news is that ray tracing implementation is almost perfect in scaling, give it a few more months and it will scale wonderfully across the cores.
09-22-2010, 08:27 AM
Movieman

Quote:

Originally Posted by ajaidev

It does not run windows "At least the version i and 13 other people are working with does not" the x86 programs have to be modified to run and scale properly. The good news is that ray tracing implementation is almost perfect in scaling, give it a few more months and it will scale wonderfully across the cores.

How about Linux?
I know we have different interests here but IF these cores have any balls at all then even though slower 48 of them pulling 125w makes for the ideal cruncher.
Electrical draw is the big concern today in the crunching world.
Let me rephrase the question: Do you think this could run windows without a huge amount of money being thrown at it?
09-22-2010, 11:47 AM
Sam_oslo

Quote:

Originally Posted by ajaidev

It does not run windows "At least the version i and 13 other people are working with does not" the x86 programs have to be modified to run and scale properly. The good news is that ray tracing implementation is almost perfect in scaling, give it a few more months and it will scale wonderfully across the cores.

What do you mean it doesn't run windows? Is this a CPU or a GPU?

How does it do in Crysis?, and does it need CUDA kernel to run windows programs? :rofl:
09-22-2010, 12:12 PM
fellix_bg

Quote:

Originally Posted by ajaidev

It does not run windows "At least the version i and 13 other people are working with does not" the x86 programs have to be modified to run and scale properly. The good news is that ray tracing implementation is almost perfect in scaling, give it a few more months and it will scale wonderfully across the cores.

SCC does not support hardware cache coherency -- syncing data status in the caches must be done manually by the programmer. I guess this is the reason for the limited compatibility, at least conserning the SMP OS kernels.
09-22-2010, 12:16 PM
Movieman

Quote:

Originally Posted by fellix_bg

SCC does not support hardware cache coherency -- syncing data status in the caches must be done manually by the programmer. I guess this is the reason for the limited compatibility, at least conserning the SMP OS kernels.

Lets hope they work out all the little headaches as it does sound very interesting .:up:
09-22-2010, 01:10 PM
trans am

any wprime?
09-22-2010, 01:22 PM
SoF

Quote:

Originally Posted by Movieman

I wonder if it would run windows and WCG?
Even if the cores are slow at 1.6GHz there are 48 of them.
That's a total of 76,800MHz..on 125w?:rofl:

Are you gettin' wet yet dave?! :rofl:

That things does sounds sexy for crunching still there seems some things needed to be worked out - keep pushing Intel :D
09-22-2010, 01:35 PM
Movieman

Quote:

Originally Posted by SoF

Are you gettin' wet yet dave?! :rofl:

That things does sounds sexy for crunching still there seems some things needed to be worked out - keep pushing Intel :D

Can I admit to changing three Depends in the last two hours and still retain my dignity?:rofl:
09-22-2010, 02:14 PM
SoF

Quote:

Originally Posted by Movieman

Can I admit to changing three Depends in the last two hours and still retain my dignity?:rofl:

:rofl: :rofl: :rofl:

http://img822.imageshack.us/img822/8599/itdepends2.jpg
09-22-2010, 05:06 PM
Glow9

Well it costs a grand for 6 so... will this cost $47952?
09-22-2010, 06:39 PM
Movieman

Quote:

Originally Posted by Glow9

Well it costs a grand for 6 so... will this cost $47952?

No, by that logic it would be $8,000.00

(6 core for a grand, 6 goes into 48 8times..)

(Another math genius loosed upon the world)

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