Intel, AMD, IBM Boosting Chip Core Count

by Jeffrey Burt

Intel officials say their 48-core processor will greatly improve the performance and energy efficiency of future data centers. The chip can run at as low as 25 watts.

Intel officials say the eight-core Nehalem EX processor, for servers with four or more sockets, will challenge higher-end Unix systems. Intel’s Boyd Davis holds up a Nehalem EX chip, which is due out in early 2010.

Intel’s six-core “Dunnington” chip is designed for greater density and higher energy efficiency, and is aimed at such systems as blade servers.

AMD is planning to release its 12-core “Magny-Cours” Opteron processor in early 2010.

The six-core “Istanbul” Opteron processor, released in June, comes with strong virtualization and power reduction features.

Due out in 2010, IBM’s eight-core Power 7 processor is a 45-nanometer chip that also will have four- and six-core variants when released.

Launched in 2007, Sun’s UltraSparc T2 chip was the second in its line of “Niagara” processors, which were designed with Internet workloads in mind. In 2008, Sun started selling systems with UltraSparc T2 Plus, a chip for SMP servers.

Tilera, which already had chips with 36 and 64 cores, in October unveiled plans for a 100-core processor, which is due in the first quarter of 2011.

Nvidia’s Fermi GPU architecture features 3 billion transistors and 512 CUDA cores, and will be incorporated into Nvidia’s GeForce, Quadro and Tesla lines.