This morning, Intel’s CTO Justin Ratter was presenting their “Single-Chip Cloud Computer” concept. This is not a product, but a research project to determine if such a product would be viable. The fundamental question is: “can we replace a server rack with a single chip?”
A small R&D team has nonetheless built a 45nm, 48 cores (24 dual-core x86), 1.3B transistors chip physical processor for evaluation purposes. The power management makes it possible to scale consumption from 25 to 125W. The chip also contains 4 DDR3 memory controllers to serve the many cores inside.
Intel will release the processor to “dozens” of partners like universities and key software companies like Microsoft. They are the software experts and will provide critical feedback to Intel. Microsoft has demonstrated a version of Visual Studio that can take advantage of the new features of this processor (the cache memory is managed differently when compared to classic Intel processors)
Interestingly, the chip can also be used for other purposes like high-performance computing, physics and things like that…. My sense is that Larrabee, Intel’s upcoming graphics processor is more likely to power that in your personal computer in the short-term.
If Intel can make this work, it could be a tremendous opportunity for the company and its clients. With cloud computing and service growing quickly, server facilities managers are scrambling to find more power efficient solutions. Google is been working on a “follow the moon” strategy where it shifts the load to regions of the world where electricity is cheap (at night). The Single-chip Cloud Computer has the potential to both save energy and grow computing power at the same time, and that’s clearly a big deal.
It’s too early to tell if the idea, the product and the pricing will be right, but it’s just to big for Intel not to try, and so far, this is looking good enough to have many software vendors and researchers interested enough to invest time and resources in it.
More info at Intel
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