Microsoft, Intel Earmark $20M for Parallel Computing (
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Microsoft and Intel plan to establish two centers, at the University of California and the University of Illinois, to study parallel computing and its applications.Intel and Microsoft are setting aside $20 million to establish a pair of
academic centers that will study and develop new methods to increase the use of
parallel
computing, the two companies announced March 18.
The UPCRC (Universal Parallel Computing Research Centers) are being
established at the University of California
at Berkeley and the University
of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. In
addition to the $20 million donation, both universities are slated to donate
several million dollars to the two centers through academic grants.
The two centers will focus on accelerating the adoption of parallel
computing in both the development of applications and the next generation of
hardware that will be built using multicore microprocessors.
IT giants Intel and Microsoft are turning to universities and their research
departments at a time when the industry is taking a serious look at how
parallel computingbreaking down information into smaller parts to take
advantage of multiple processing corescan assist application developers
working to take full advantage of the multicore x86 processors being
developed by Intel and its main rival, Advanced
Micro Devices.
On March 17, Intel announced that it was moving forward with its Nehalem
chip, which will use a new microarchitecture. The company said the Nehalem processor
will scale from two to eight cores and offer two instructional threads per
core.