Some facts about the prototype of processor with 80 cores, which intel company prepares for the beginning of February conference in international solid state circuits conference (ISSCC) 2007, was already published in our news. This measure will takes place during February, and the preliminary information about this experimental processor was published by our associate , which is referred to the intel colleagues , which took direct part in the development of processor.
We start from the fact that this is only experimental prototype, which in the constant form can never not become series product. However, engineers will conduct a number of experiments, draw the appropriate conclusions, and they will consider the obtained experience with the development of polynuclear processors in future.
Intel Representatives consider that companies is required from five to eight years for creating the series processor with 80 cores. Thus these cores have primitive architecture, and processor reaches high speed predominantly due to the large quantity of core. The cores united in one processor can have a different destination and speed. This approach close to the ideas from AMD; however, Intel sees prospects in the creation of processors with the large number of uniform primitive cores, capable of effectively dividing load between them .
A large quantity of simple cores can be satisfied by low specific energy consumption. For example, the created prototype of processor with 80 cores has a level of energy consumption not more than 100 W. This a little on the present measures, since four core processor from intel now have a level TDP from 105 to 130 W.
Processor with 80 cores can redistribute load during overheating of separate cores. When they will begin excessively to be heated, to the calculations will be connected to other cores from the cold part of processor, this will result in reduction of the temperature in the first region. Excess cores can be disconnected, if load is small, which will also lower the level of energy consumption.
So it will be possible to increase performance with the retention of energy consumption in the reasonable limits. The most interesting, that the area of processor with 80 cores will be smaller than in contemporary four core processors.