Category: Technology (Page 10 of 10)

New research prototype with 80 cores detailed by Intel CEO, who promises production versions within 5 years.

Today at the Intel Developer Forum in San Francisco, Intel today revealed a new research prototype processor with 80 floating point cores on a single die. Each core runs at 3.16 GHz, according to Justin Rattner, Intel’s chief technology officer. That’s 80 FPU cores at 3.16 GHz producing (let me do the math at about 0.2 milliFLOPS) 252.8 GHz!

The silicon die on this experimental chip, just 300mm², is capable of achieving a teraFLOPS of performance, or 1 trillion floating point operations per second on a single chip. This is not to be confused with the marketing hype currently being spewed by Microsoft and Sony regarding their gaming consoles being able to pump out teraFLOPS (pure hype and funky math).

CEO Paul Otellini contrasted this with Intel’s historic breakthrough 11 years ago with the world’s first teraFLOPS supercomputer, a computational beast occupying 85 cabinets in 2,000+ square feet, powered by nearly 10,000 Pentium Pro processors. That computer, ASCI Red, was decommissioned this year by Sandia National Nuclear Security Administration, after nine years of use.Of interest is that despite its 10,000 processors, the system was able to average several hundred hours between hardware-caused interrupts, handily beating its design rating of 27 hours between meltdowns.

Otellini pledged to have a commercially available 80-core CPU within the next five years (with, presumably, much improved TTBM [Total Time Between Meltdowns])! That’s both comforting and shocking all in the same breath.

This week Intel announced quad core processors ready for market in November (named Core 2 Quad).

Image courtesy of News.com (http://news.com.com/2300-1006_3-6119652.html)

Interesting Factoids:
Some interesting facts are that the KLAT2 supercomputer at the University of Kentucky cost about $640 per gigaFLOPS. This had fallen to $82/gigaFLOPS when the University of Kentucky installed the KASY0. If one considers the very specialized GPUs in ATI or NVidia video cards, a gigaFLOP today can be had for about $1.

Internet chatter (mere speculation) regarding Apple’s cell phone plans is fascinating, evolving from “Will Apple release an iTunes-enabled phone?” to “When will Apple release and iTunes-enabled phone?”

Apple’s fall from computing dominance was driven in part by the company’s focus on launching market disrupting technology called “Newton”, the first hand-held computer (now called a PDA). In that instance, being first to market nearly destroyed Apple as they fettered away copious amounts of cash and Macintosh market momentum publicly trying to perfect an overpriced, poorly performing device for which most people weren’t yet ready. The icing on the cake was when a large number of Apple employees bolted to join a little company cofounded by Apple veteran Donna Dubinsky called Palm Computing.

Has Apple learned its lesson? I suggest they have, as they appear to be consciously dragging their feet in entering the music-enabled cell phone business. Their 2005 partnership with Motorola to produce an iTunes compatible cellphone resulted in a bit of a marketplace row when the product shipped sporting only meager musical capabilities. Apple’s problem? Heck no. It was a Motorola phone that disappointed, not an Apple phone.

Now, with 25 entrants in this increasingly crowded field, the time is ripe for Apple to make a huge splash in a market that curiously has benefitted from the mere speculation that Apple might come to play. I suspect in hindsight, we’ll marvel at the market awareness of Jobs et. al, in that they sat back, perfected an initial offering that dwarfed those of their early-to-market competitors, without giving up market share in a business where brand allegiance is trumped by feature set. And the iTunes universe is the killer feature set. Yes, Apple appears to have learned that lesson well.

Read more: http://www.appleinsider.com/article.php?id=2073

Note: The iPhone rendition above is provided courtesy of MacRumors.com. According to that site, the iPhone will sport the familiar iPod click wheel interface, which will slide down to reveal a normal numeric phone keypad. I suspect that the functionality of the click wheel will be integrated into a touch-sensitive LCD screen, based upon recent US Patent Office applications by Apple for such an interface. Their filing, made September 30, 2005 is titled “Proximity detector in handheld device.” See image below, courtesy of the US Patent Office.

Research into alternative computing interfaces is a fascinating topic. Check out these alternative interfaces, which provide a glimpse into the future of human-computer interaction:

Cool. I got my iMac last week, and Iâ??ve spent the weekend getting to know it. Itâ??s a really great machine. The Mac OS has come a long way since my last experience with it (back in the OS 8.5 days). Iâ??ve been following it closely ever since leaving it for the Windows camp, but reading about it and using it are two different things. I welcome this move out of the Windows morass!

Iâ??m using the iMac Core Duo, and the great iLife software that comes standard on it, to build this web site. Iâ??m going back in time, posting items from my diary and other defunct blogs as time permits.

Itâ??s interesting to note that there is a great amount of fear regarding Appleâ??s technology. First and foremost, thereâ??s a camp of people who steadfastly refuse to consider buying/using a Mac. In my many conversations with these people, it becomes readily apparent that theyâ??ve never used a Mac. Ever. They have, for all intents, been limited to the Microsoft method of computing. Now, to each his own, but it sure seems to me that before you state an opinion, you ought to have some knowledge of the topic. Otherwise, you become a victim of your own prejudice. Lord knows thatâ??s the cause of a great deal of heartache in the world. If your desktop bigotry leaves you defending a myth….

A friend of mine chastised me for buying the new-model iMac, going so far as announcing to a coworker of mine that I had made a mistake. His point was that no-one in their right mind would buy a new revision of a computer. Whatâ??s obvious is that heâ??s basing his sentiments on trolling the various Mac-faithful forum sites, wherein users report various problems with their computers. It seems to me that these forums are in no way representative of the Macintosh experience; those with problems will seek out a solution by posting to the boards. Plainly thatâ??s human nature. Heck, Marketing 101 taught us is that dissatisfied customers shriek the loudest. I doubt the users who have no problems are posting their experiences there. In a nutshell, to view a companyâ??s offerings based on support forums ignores the other 1,253,900 quarterly buyers who arenâ??t having problems. And finally, itâ??s less than reasonable to suggest that buying a PC from one of the clone assemblers is an experience any safer: Apple consistently beats the pants off other vendors in customer satisfaction.

Fantastic stuff, Apple.

After anxiously enduring shipping delays, buyerâ??s remorse, and all the other events of the week, my new iMac Core Duo arrived this morning. Did I expect it to? No.

It was rescheduled to arrive on Friday the 27th. When I rolled in to work, I checked FedEx.com, and it was on the truck for delivery. Now, usually, FedEx delivers in the early afternoon (1 p.m.-ish), but I had a strange feeling that they would be early. So I immediately bailed, drove home, and no more than ten minutes later I was calling my wife, telling her I had received it. Fantastic. Iâ??m going to bring it in to work tomorrow.