Glasgow Scientists Build 1000-Core PC Processing Chip
The International Symposium on Applied Reconfigurable Computing in March 2011 will have an interesting new entry from a Dr. Wim Vanderbauwhede and a group of scientists from the University of Glasgow. Bypassing, nay blowing right past, present market technology, which currently offers multi-core processors of two, four, eight, and even sixteen processors, Glasgow and his team have apparently created a new, 1,000-core processor that they claim runs 20 times faster than the multi-core processors currently used in existing PCs.
Dr. Vanderbauwhede states that he and his team used a chip called a Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) to create this screamingly fast, smokin' new processor that holds millions of transistors much like today’s processors. The difference is that the scientists utilized a method that provides dedicated memory to each core, which effectively improves the overall output of each of the cores to make the processor run faster.
Though the processor is said to run 20 times faster than any of today’s processors, Dr. Vanderbauwhede also says that it actually consumes less power than current processors. In the UK’s Top News, Dr. Vanderbauwhede claims that the “processing power is huge while their energy consumption is very small because they are so much quicker—so they are also a greener option.” Overall, the 1000-core processor is said to be able to process 5 gb of data per second.
Of course, many of the variables that affect processing in general must be discussed before such a piece of technology is market-ready, although so far the only negative claim made by Dr. Vanderbauwhede is that “FPGAs are hard to be used within standard computers as they are difficult to program.”
Programming is just one of the critical elements for configuring processors in standard computer systems, and there have been no statements regarding other variables required to utilize the chip. Other than the claim that the processor is “greener,” no mention was made regarding the amount of juice that is actually required to power the processor, and whether it will even be feasible at the server or desktop level.
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