Last summer, Intel announced that it was engaged in the supply of customized processor configurations Xeon. During 2012, the company supplied to customers 18 varieties of custom-configured server processors. At that time, it was a minor in terms of architecture changes: changes in the number of core on the choices of frequencies of the spectrum involved interfaces and, in general, the output for a given thermal package. Now the company is going on. According to the reached with unnamed cloud providers agreements, Intel will set on the substrate crystal matrix processor and FPGA-hardware even sew the necessary instructions in processor architecture Xeon.
If you move a little to the side, you can recall the recent statement by HP to develop a draft Machine. One of the items was listed transition to develop specialized processors instead of general purpose processors. Such decisions much more effectively perform their tasks, and the energy for the large providers and service companies - it's a huge article fixed costs. If you overpay a little for a custom processor, the money can then be returned through savings on electricity consumption.
At the first stage Intel Xeon models offer customers with FPGA-matrices. Such models can be installed in conventional server processors for Intel on-board connectors. Matrix will be connected to the CPU via QPI crystal and can be accessed as a cache processors and system memory. Depending on the current task template can be reprogrammed to increase efficiency. If the effect of specific instructions would be large enough, in the second stage, the company plans to transfer units for their execution in the processor architecture Xeon. Also under the order. Thus, Intel processors from the primitive configuration is ready to move to a rather serious processors configuring .