Chip designer ClearSpeed has put 96 computing cores onto a single semiconductor, as the race to secure a niche in the emerging market for co-processors heats up.
Code-named Avebury, the company’s upcoming chip contains 96 separate internal units tuned for doing particular types of math problems. Inserted into Intel- or Advanced Micro Device-based servers, Avebury will handle the repetitive, computational grunt work involved in preparing a study on how a single protein will react with thousands of others or a financial analysis that charts how slight changes in a stock portfolio could affect a person’s financial position over the course of several years. “This allows for local, high-performance computing, so technical users can complete their work on a small cluster or their desktop,” said David Hoff, director of technical marketing at ClearSpeed, which has offices in Los Gatos, Calif., and Bristol, England. Chips that help a computer’s main microprocessors perform specific types of math problems are becoming a big business once again, decades after companies like Intel integrated these chips into main microprocessors to cut costs.
Source: ZDNet
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