Intel has issued a press release announcing that its researchers have developed a prototype 80-core chip; Intel says that the real deal would take from five to eight years to hit the market. More cores at what cost? Not much, it seems. The chip-maker is claiming the 80-core device executes teraflop performance while dissipating less than 100 W of power (less than many of today"s dual-core chips). The company"s engineers will present a paper on the technical details of the 80-core processor at this week"s (Sunday through Thursday) Integrated Solid State Circuits Conference in San Francisco. Stay tuned. Check the front page as more information about the CPU becomes available.
Intel"s Sunday press noted that teraflops performance could make possible a wide range of new applications: "For example, artificial intelligence, instant video communications, photo-realistic games, multimedia data mining and real-time speech recognition--once deemed as science fiction in "Star Trek" shows--could become everyday realities."