Intel Demos 48-Core Cloud Computing Chip At Cebit

Semiconductor giant Intel has showed the prototype of a computer, at Cebit that has a processor with 48 cores and is fitted in a standard mid-sized ATX tower.

What was even more interesting is that the motherboard was in full sight, flooded by blue light and behind a clear perspex window. The customised board doesn't have any PCI slots and come with eight memory banks and appears to use a traditional HSF.

The concept chip apparently consumed a mere 75W during the demo and is not much bigger than top of the end processors out there.

Intel described the processor as a single-chip cloud computer (SCC) where all the cores are connected to each other using a so-called mesh interconnect which allows each core to run its own operating system or be used as part of a whole.

Putting it another way, it means that the Intel has manage to put a complete network into a chip, the only thing missing being the I/O and the other components. 

Each of the core comes with its own L2 cache and the 2D mesh can support up to 256Gbps worth of bandwidth with a total addressable memory space of up to 64GB.

As the Inquirer - which has a great video showing the capabilities of the chip - puts it, it is a rendering farm on a chip.