Comments on: Intel shows off 80-core processor

The chip unveiled at IDF works, but there are a lot of hurdles to overcome before an 80-core chip shows up in a living room.

[mrorie]

Click to view?

The "click to view" area of the page doesn't pop up to anything else, at least not in my copy of FF.

[Dachi]

Link

http://news.com.com/2300-1006_3-6158220-1.html

[billmosby]

multi threads

Apple will shortly make it quite a bit easier and more systematic for
programmers to incorporate multiple threads into their
applications. There will, of course, be applications which aren't
easily put into multi-threaded form, so it will not be easy for all
apps to take advantage of multicore processors.

[zaznet]

Multithreaded Applications

That's the general problem in software. But you can thank Microsoft and Sony more than Intel or Apple for pushing multiple core programming design into the world. Both the X-Box 360 and PS3 use multiple core systems. In order for game developers to get the "next big title" in way of high end graphics and lots of action they do need to use all of the cores.

Your common applications like Microsoft Office or Internet Explorer (Firefox too, if you prefer) do not need to take immediate advantage of multiple cores. Their benefit from a dual or quad core system is that they get a chunk of CPU that is not being used by another single thread/core application. The drive to improve performance here is not at the application level until you hit some high end software such as AutoCAD or Photoshop.

Think of how long it takes your MS Word program on Windows XP with any dual core CPU to open a document, spell check that document and then print it in the highest quality. Now think of how long it took the comparable software on Windows 95 and a Pentium II (single core in case you forgot) to complete the same steps. The difference is barely noticeable.

[EmilioB]

How? They don't have ...

http://www.pervasivedatarush.com/

So Apple will have to OEM it in order for your statement to be even close to reality... :-)

[rapier1]

Threads

I'm glad Apple is finally thinking seriously about threads.
Considering the poor threading performance they have now...

[fitzgm3]

Good Thing Intel Has Partnered with Sun

It is a good thing Intel and Sun announced their partnership recently. Solaris will have no problem scaling to 80 cores it has been scaling past 64 CPUs for almost 10 years now (and 144 CPUs for the past 2 or 3).

[adlyb1]

Processors are different from cores

Processors have dedicated support components like cache and memory controllers, while multi-core processors have to share these items.

[ThePenguin]

Sun

The Sunfire servers are a joke, merely Sun's weak attempt at multi CPU, a remake of Cray's CS6400 - Cray built with SPARC chips.

It took sun years to figure out how to increase the bandwidth on the xbar switch, without increasing latency into the seconds realm.

IBM's Deep Blue series can utilize way more procs than any Sun system.

SGI has systems off the shelf that will scale out to THOUSANDS of processors under 1 system image. Internal system bandwidth eclipses any other system, past or present. Latency sometimes measured in nanoseconds. SGI are the highest performing, lowest latency, most secure and innovative platforms out there.

Sun didn't invent MCM (multichip modules), that work was pioneered on Gallium Arsenide wafers by Cray & IBM. Intel is a late entrant to the multi core systems. But, with Intel's volume, they will have shipped way more ncore chips than anyone else.


Have you ever even touched a Sun machine?

[GrandpaN1947]

Gold mine for microsoft

80 cores, a copy of Windows is only good for 2 cores. That means you would need to buy 40 copies of Windows to get the full functionality from the cores. At approximately $250 per copy, that would be $10,000.00 just for the OS.

[adlyb1]

Actually...

MS currently charges by the socket, while most of the other bigs (IBM, Oracle, etc) count cores.

[zaznet]

No MS Products for this yet...

First of all there are no copies of Windows that will run on this processor or even any processor based on the same instruction set with fewer cores.

Secondly you will not buy the OS, you will buy CPU licenses if Microsoft decided to charge by the core count which they currently charge by the CPU. All 80 cores of this are one CPU. The current quad cores are working with Windows without having to buy two licenses (one for each pair of cores as you stated).

Lastly, it will be a while before we see any main stream desktop or server applications that use this. The most likely place for this single CPU is in very specialized research. That is much like what it is doing over the next 5 years in allowing Intel to study very dense core capacity.

This is intended to be a super computer, not a desktop computer. It will help Intel develop the future of commodity desktop and server computing which will require the use of non X86 instruction sets to get the most bang for your buck.

[ArtInvent]

Great opportunity for Linux

It will take a huge push to make MS compatible and advantageous with multi-core. Look how long it takes just to put a middling upgrade like Vista on the shelves. Linux could probably achieve better results much more quickly porting the OS to multi-core - and of course no matter how many cores you have, free is still free.

[momule]

Just goes to show....

that our puter life will be in a constant state of flux forever.....just as it has been from the gitgo. I do remember my first computer and the salesguy telling me that I would probably not need the optional 20MB hard drive or a processor larger than a 286 even though the 386 was being developed. Then I bought Kings Quest 1 and it used most of that real estate. At the time my mom had been playing with a Texas Instruments machine using a cassette tape as data storage and trying to play primitive pong games and then upgraded to a IBM with an 8086 processor and was trying to run AOL 1.0 . So,the lesson is: hang onto your seats my friends.

[jabbotts]

You Betcha

Games push hardware development.
Porn pushes internet development.

That seems to be the way of our obsession. It's not surprising that a game convinced you to upgrade to the 386. Heck, a game is convincing me to upgrade now.

For me, it was the Coleco Adam that started this whole mess. After wearing out the Adam, I was hooked and lived the evolution from then on.

[BreakfastThreads]

Solaris EatsThreads for Breaskfast

Why no mention of it in your article when referring to operating systems? Unlike Windows, OS 10 and Linux (which you do mention) Solaris does a great job of passing instructions to multiple cores.

A mention at least seems appropriate especially given Intel's recent Solaris deal with Sun.

[zaznet]

Solaris isn't well known still...

You have to keep in mind the target audience. Just look at the comments about running Windows on this CPU which would be impossible to accomplish at this time. Hopefully Intel and Sun will work on making that next hybrid OS Multi-Core system together and we'll see Solaris on those 80 core monsters when they go commercial.

[bobby_brady]

Each malware/spyware app gets it's own core

eom

[cshsieh]

that's not enough for MS

You virtually mean that there's only 79 malware can be running at a time. Come on, that's just not enough for future Windows.

[darix2005]

intel

impressive

---
http://mortgage.emigrantas.com - mortgage blog

[cyclotron--2008]

Software Radio OS

it strikes me that the (JTRS) SCA type Operating System is
processor/core agnostic and likes a heterogenous processing
environment. I think these Software Radio Operating Systems are
quite likely to hit the desktop in 2009+ on this sort of multi-core
CPU! (also check out the Intel "Larrabee" CGPU!) I'll have to brush
up on my Corba and Dcom and Core Framework , maybe tryout
FreeRTOS or Integrity on one of the Intel systems?

[EmilioB]

Software for terascale computing: Take One

Pervasive DataRush can't wait for the 80-core chip to be ready for ISV testing !!

Get ready. Start learning hyper-parallel application development NOW:

http://www.pervasivedatarush.com/

[EmilioB]

Yes, an scaling OLTP way different than...

...scaling data processing applications.

It's time for http://www.pervasivedatarush.com/ to hit Sun's lineup.

Gee, I wonder what 200,000,000 lines of single-threaded COBOL code will do on a terascale chip ?? Answer: Nothing more than 1 core.

[dargon19888]

Silly git..

A true relational engine can take advantage of this today. Can you say vcpu?

[Penguinisto]

Forget "Doom"... it'd be my personal render farm!

...It would be hella nice to be able to take an animation render job (or even a still carved into sectors) and let each core chew away on it's bit of the final CG artwork... Instead of waiting a zillion minutes for a average high-end render, you could rack it out in seconds (or perhaps even show the final raytrace and render in real-time, right there...

/P

[jhustead]

RE: Forget "Doom"... it'd be my personal render farm!

I thought the same thing as you did when I first saw this headline. It makes my mind wonder what Industrial Light and Magic and Pixar could do with a few of these frame crunchers.

-James

[sanenazok]

Here comes the licensing fees

Let's see, $200/processor for Windows=$16,000 I guess they'll need a different model for licensing as well...

[rapier1]

core != processor

nuff said.

[SiXiam]

Potential

I have heard a lot of back and forth on this talkback today, but...

This processor is amazing and the Intel engineers deserve recognition for such work. If Intel continues AMD will be of little threat in 5 years time.

So....
Amd, get to work and show us all something so cool it will blow our minds (read: 100 Terra Flop CPU)....

[davidmec]

They have been talking about multi-core licensing for a while

http://www.technewsworld.com/story/news/37432.html

[davidmec]

They have been talking about multi-core licensing for a while

http://www.technewsworld.com/story/news/37432.html

[genotypewriter]

It won't be...

a zillion times faster... c'mon! It's got only 80 cores! Even if each core is a bit faster than the market leading cores why do you think the scale up would be better than 80? :)

[MyInsight]

hmmmm since this thing is in theroy 20x faster than the current quad cores with that much processing power would you even need a gpu if it was flexable enough to process such instructions?

[pehks]

Hi
I want to think of the computers in the future like a
huge super computer much like google search machine
and ordinary users can log on to it and work in virtual machine in this super ultimate-computer
there can be environment for user - games, word, e-mail - communicating skype-like software.
there will be no headache with processors, storage, os - it is all separated from the users and organisations and intel and other emc2 company are only accountable for that. Linux can be seen
as pro-supermega-ultimate OS for that computer.
thenks if you read it all!

[Mikus01]

NVIDIA's 3D Graphics.... INTEL's 80 Core Processor... Hell yeah!!! The next generation of gamers will be playing on a board that makes you feel inside the game (Jason X's virtual reality is coming close to being a reality!!!!)