Intel 80 core chip unveiled

Announced at IDF Fall 2006, Intel’s 80-core CPU was recently showcased at the annual Integrated Solid State Circuits Conference (ISSCC) in San Francisco.

And this piece of machinery really works, and it do has 80 individual processing cores. The entire chip can deliver more than 1 teraflops (trillion floating point operations per second) and each of the 80 cores consists in a computing and a connection element. 1 teraflops seems really astonishing, if we’re taking into consideration that this CPU will be available in 2012, and we compare it with the actual dual-core Conroe or quad-core Kentsfield, which performances are far lesser than that.

A waffle of Intel’s 80-core chip unveiled at ISSCC 2007

Intel demonstrated that this processor works, in a closed briefing for journalists, using a special cooling system and other components required for it to start. This way, the chip got up to 3 GHz, but Intel claims that with a proper cooling (realised in their labs), it can go even higher. Take a look at the movie below, for more details.

This CPU is only a prototype right now, and i don’t think it will be available for PC users anywhere in the near future. But the concept is definitely interesting, and is shows us that Intel’s engineers never rest. What’s interesting is that the producers claim that this chip only uses less then 100 watts per hour, which is amazing, given the actual Kentsfield that uses between 105 and 130 watts. Anyway, all i can say is that I’m really looking further into this subject, cause it’s very interesting. And I’ll keep you in touch with it too.