[Beowulf] Intel unveils 1 teraflop chip with 50-plus cores

[Vincent Diepeveen]

Well,

If it's gonna use 2 pci-express slots, for sure it's eating massive  
power, just like the gpu's.

Furthermore the word 'double precision' is nowhere there, so we can  
safely assume single precision.

Speaking of which - isn't nvidia and amd already delivering cards  
that deliver a lot?

AMD's HD6990 is 500 euro and delivers a 5+ Tflop and supposedly so in  
openCL.

Knowing intel is not delivering hardware dirt cheap - despite  
hammering the bulldozer, bulldozer
so far is cheaper than any competative intel chip - though might  
change a few months from now when the 22nm
parts are there.

For crunching get gpu's - as for intel - i hope they release cheap  
sixcore cpu's and don't overprice 8 core Xeon...

On Nov 16, 2011, at 10:52 AM, Eugen Leitl wrote:

>
> http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/technologybrierdudleysblog/ 
> 2016775145_wow_intel_unveils_1_teraflop_c.html
>
> Wow: Intel unveils 1 teraflop chip with 50-plus cores
>
> Posted by Brier Dudley
>
> I thought the prospect of quad-core tablet computers was exciting.
>
> Then I saw Intel's latest -- a 1 teraflop chip, with more than 50  
> cores, that
> Intel unveiled today, running it on a test machine at the SC11  
> supercomputing
> conference in Seattle.
>
> That means my kids may take a teraflop laptop to college -- if  
> their grades
> don't suffer too much having access to 50-core video game consoles.
>
> It wasn't that long ago that Intel was boasting about the first  
> supercomputer
> with sustained 1 teraflop performance. That was in 1997, on a  
> system with
> 9,298 Pentium II chips that filled 72 computing cabinets.
>
> Now Intel has squeezed that much performance onto a matchbook-sized  
> chip,
> dubbed "Knights Ferry," based on its new "Many Integrated Core"  
> architecture,
> or MIC.
>
> It was designed largely in the Portland area and has just started
> manufacturing.
>
> "In 15 years that's what we've been able to do. That is stupendous.  
> You're
> witnessing the 1 teraflop barrier busting," Rajeeb Hazra, general  
> manager of
> Intel's technical computing group, said at an unveiling ceremony.  
> (He holds
> up the chip here)
>
> A single teraflop is capable of a trillion floating point  
> operations per
> second.
>
> On hand for the event -- in the cellar of the Ruth's Chris Steak  
> House in
> Seattle -- were the directors of the National Center for Computational
> Sciences at Oak Ridge Laboratory and the Application Acceleration  
> Center of
> Excellence.
>
> Also speaking was the chief science officer of the GENCI  
> supercomputing
> organization in France, which has used its Intel-based system for  
> molecular
> simulations of Alzheimer's, looking at issues such as plaque  
> formation that's
> a hallmark of the disease.
>
> "The hardware is hardly exciting. ... The exciting part is doing the
> science," said Jeff Nichols, acting director of the computational  
> center at
> Oak Ridge.
>
> The hardware was pretty cool, though.
>
> George Chrysos, the chief architect of Knights Ferry, came up from the
> Portland area with a test system running the new chip, which was  
> connected to
> a speed meter on a laptop to show that it was running around 1  
> teraflop.
>
> Intel had the test system set up behind closed doors -- on a coffee  
> table in
> a hotel suite at the Grand Hyatt, and wouldn't allow reporters to take
> pictures of the setup.
>
> Nor would the company specify how many cores the chip has -- just  
> more than
> 50 -- or its power requirement.
>
> If you're building a new system and want to future-proof it, the  
> Knights
> Ferry chip uses a double PCI Express slot. Chrysos said the systems  
> are also
> likely to run alongside a few Xeon processors.
>
> This means that Intel could be producing teraflop chips for personal
> computers within a few years, although there's lots of work to be  
> done on the
> software side before you'd want one.
>
> Another question is whether you'd want a processor that powerful on  
> a laptop,
> for instance, where you may prefer to have a system optimized for  
> longer
> battery life, Hazra said.
>
> More important, Knights Ferry chips may help engineers build the next
> generation of supercomputing systems, which Intel and its partners  
> hope to
> delivery by 2018.
>
> Power efficiency was a highlight of another big announcement this  
> week at
> SC11. On Monday night, IBM announced its "next generation  
> supercomputing
> project," the Blue Gene/Q system that's heading to Lawrence Livermore
> National Laboratory next year.
>
> Dubbed Sequoia, the system should run at 20 petaflops peak  
> performance. IBM
> expects it to be the world's most power-efficient computer,  
> processing 2
> gigaflops per watt.
>
> The first 96 racks of the system could be delivered in December. The
> Department of Energy's National Nuclear Security Administration  
> uses the
> systems to work on nuclear weapons, energy reseach and climate  
> change, among
> other things.
>
> Sequoia complements another Blue Gene/Q system, a 10-petaflop setup  
> called
> "Mira," which was previously announced by Argonne National Laboratory.
>
> A few images from the conference, which runs through Friday at the  
> Washington
> State Convention & Trade Center, starting with perusal of Intel  
> boards:
>
>
> Take home a Cray today!
>
> IBM was sporting Blue Genes, and it wasn't even casual Friday:
>
> A 94 teraflop rack:
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