Intel Demonstrates 80 Core Processor

In a move that has raised more than a few eyebrows, Intel has yet again demonstrated its 80 core processor.

This powerful processor can perform a staggering trillion floating-point operations per second, which puts it in the league of super computers. Supercomputers are generally used by the Aviation industry, banks and for other purposes where software tasks need to be handled in real-time. For the chip it has demonstrated, Intel has used 100 million transistors on the chip, which measures 275 millimeters squared. The chip was built using Intel's 65-nanometer manufacturing technology, for its demonstration purposes.

Despite Intel's demonstration, a lot of stock should not be put on this bleeding edge technology arriving anytime soon. For one by Intel's own admission, this chip will take at least 5 years more of development before it can be made available commercially. Secondly, the current generation 65nm technology or the upcoming 45 nm process cannot be utilized for the mass-production of the new 80 core processors. It is around the end of 2009, when the first generation of 32nm processors to be called Westmere ships that it will be possible to get the 80 core chip out in any serious numbers.

Finally this chip does not use the popular x86 instruction set that is being used by Intel and AMD's chips. This means all current generation OS like Windows Vista can't be run on the research chip. A whole new generation of software, would need to be written from scratch and be optimized for multi-core threading.