Intel 50 Core Chipset

A University of Texas of supercomputer will tap a future Intel chip that contains more than 50 processor cores--the first instance of Intel supplying this novel technology to a commercial computer.

The Texas Advanced Computing Center (TACC) and University of Texas announced  today that they will deploy a 10-Petaflops (or 10,000 trillion operations per second) supercomputer dubbed "Stampede."

 When it arrives in early 2013, the supercomputer is expected to be among the world's most powerful computers for scientific and financial applications. Inside will be an Intel chip design codenamed "Knights Corner,"which will house more than 50 processor cores. Intel server chips typically top out at about 8 cores.

But Knights Corner is not a typical Intel chip. It has its roots in a project called Larrabee, which initially was intended to be a many-core, high-end graphics processor unit or GPU for gaming and media applications. That project was canceled in 2009.

GPU cores are typically smaller and more specialized than CPU (central processor unit) cores--the latter is what Intel has traditionally manufactured for the PC market. GPUs can be much faster than CPUs at specialized tasks. (Though even the definition of an Intel CPU is changing. Intel's Sandy Bridge CPU, for example, integrates a many-core GPU.)

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