New Cloud Comuting Chip

[phillw]

Intel has unveiled a prototype chip that packs 48 separate processing cores on to a chunk of silicon the size of a postage stamp.


Intel said it had already demonstrated Linux running on each core. It has also found a way to slash the management overhead required to keep the processors crunching data in synch.



Microsoft said it had already put SCC into its development pipeline so it could exploit it in the future.



He he, I just couldn't resist posting that one :D


Phill.

[ZankerH]

Microsoft said it had already put SCC into its development pipeline so it could exploit it in the future.

Wrong. It's not a product and it won't be a product. It was basically just an exercise in "let's see how many IA-compatible cores we can stick on a single unit".

What's your source?

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/12/02/intel_scc/

[phillw]

Wrong. It's not a product and it won't be a product. It was basically just an exercise in "let's see how many IA-compatible cores we can stick on a single unit".

What's your source?

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/12/02/intel_scc/



Intel said the SCC would be made officially available during the first half of 2010. More details will be released at the International Solid-State Circuits Conference in San Francisco on 8 February, 2010.
From ?.... http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/8392392.stm

So, looks like there's some cross briefing going on. ???

http://techresearch.intel.com/articles/Tera-Scale/1826.htm

Intel Labs believes the SCC is an ideal research platform to help accelerate many-core software research and advanced development. Intel researchers have already ported a variety of applications to the SCC, including web servers, physics modeling, and financial analytics. By the middle of 2010, Intel Labs anticipates having dozens of industry and academic research partners conducting advanced software research on the SCC hardware platform. Please take this survey if you would like to express an interest in collaborating with Intel on the SCC.


Looks like a real chip to me !!

Regards,

Phill.

[ZankerH]

As Intel CTO Justin Rattner emphasized during his presentation (PDF) on Wednesday to reporters in San Francisco, "This is not a product. It never will be a product." But the SCC does provide an insight into the direction into which Intel is heading - and the path the company is treading is many-cored.

From the source in my original post.

They did actually make a production unit and software that appears to work in it, but have no plans for mass production if I understand correctly.

Also, what the hell is it with everyone naming stuff that has nothing to do with "cloud" as having something to do with it? It's a processor with 48 cores, I fail to see the connection between that and the concept of signing away your data to an anonymous server in india owned by someone who couldn't care any less if it gets deleted.

[phillw]

From the source in my original post.

They did actually make a production unit and software that appears to work in it, but have no plans for mass production if I understand correctly.

Also, what the hell is it with everyone naming stuff that has nothing to do with "cloud" as having something to do with it? It's a processor with 48 cores, I fail to see the connection between that and the concept of signing away your data to an anonymous server in india owned by someone who couldn't care any less if it gets deleted.


I agree on Cloud, I guess the problem with big company's is that one part noeth not what the other part doeth .. --> http://blogs.intel.com/research/2009/12/sccloudcomp.php

/edit

The chip has won the "cloud" name because it brings together the computing resources typically filling several racks in a data centre.

No wonder we're all confused !!!

And, it appears that 48 to a prelude to an eventual 100 core one. Which is sensible for those tasks with which they are looking to test on it. The reason for the post was that.
1) There are Chips
2) They have run Linux on them -
Intel Labs has demonstrating the implementation of a microcosm of a Cloud datacenter on chip, with Linux on each core, running an application using Hadoop.Are they for general release at this stage ? No - Do they exists and are there for academics to investigate ? Yes.
We expect to make SCC (http://techresearch.intel.com/articles/Tera-Scale/1826.htm) available to academic and industry partners (SCC software research program (http://www.makebettercode.com/scc_software_research/form.php)) who will explore all of these directions and more, leading to understanding of how to build better processors for the Cloud as well as how scalable programming models and architectures that will apply to all processors for all market segments. Today we enter an exciting new phase of our research to bring exciting new applications to uses with the performance of many-core processors.My point, that you may have missed was that they are running Linux. Not were they releasing them into your desktop computer some time soon. From my understanding, they are designing Blade Servers on a chip. Which is pretty cool. And, of course, we know which OS rules the Server envirnoment :-)

Phill.

[ZankerH]

Thanks for clearing that up. The separate releases did seem a bit confusing.

[openuniverse]

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[Sporkman]

I think a cloud commuting chip would be fantastic! Anything to shorten travel times to & from work, while also reducing congestion & gridlock, is a-ok in my book.