Dec 25, `07 — DigiTimes is reporting on AMD adjusting its triple-core CPU model numbers and launch dates, citing sources at motherboard makers.
“AMD will launch two B2 stepping triple-core CPUs, Phenom 8600 and 8400 in March of next year, while in the second quarter, the company will launch three more models, Phenom 8700, 8650 and 8450.
The Phenom 8400 and 8600 will feature core frequencies of 2.1GHz and 2.3GHz, respectively, while the Phenom 8700 will clock at 2.4GHz. Phenom 8650 and 8450 will be based on B3 stepping cores, and will have frequencies of 2.3GHz and 2.1GHz, respectively. All five CPUs will have a 95W TDP.
The high price/performance ratio of the triple-core CPUs could force Intel to cut prices of its quad-core products which could cause higher-end models to cut into sales of lower-end CPUs, noted the sources. However, AMD could also face the same problem, they added.” More at DigiTimes.
Taipei, Taiwan — Dec 06, ‘07 — DigiTimes is reporting on Intel releasing its first desktop dual-core Celeron series, E1000, on January 20, citing sources at motherboard makers.
DigiTimes further writes, “The first dual-core Celeron processor, the E1200, will have core frequency of 1.6GHz, 800MHz FSB and 512KB L2 cache with a price of US$53 in thousand-unit quantities.
On the same day, Intel will also launch three quad-core (Yorkfield) CPUs, the Q9300, Q9450 and Q9550 and another four dual-core (Wolfdale) CPUs, the E8190, E8200, E8400 and E8500 for desktops, the motherboard makers added.”
Meanwhile, Intel will also roll out the quad-core QX9770 processor which features a frequency of 3.2GHz, 1600MHz FSB, 12MB cache and TDP of 136W with a price tag of US$1,399 in thousand-unit quantities in January. Before March, the company will also introduce a high-end quad-core QX9775 processor with a frequency of 3.2GHz, 1600MHz FSB, 12MB L2 cache and 150W TDP. Pricing in thousand-unit quantities will be US$1,499, said the DigiTimes sources. More at DigiTimes.
YORKTOWN HEIGHTS, NY - Dec 06, 2007 — Supercomputers that consist of thousands of individual processor “brains” connected by miles of copper wires could one day fit into a laptop PC, thanks in part to a breakthrough by IBM scientists announced today.
And while today’s supercomputers can use the equivalent energy required to power hundreds of homes, these future tiny supercomputers-on-a-chip would expend the energy of a light bulb.
In a paper published in the journal Optics Express, the IBM researchers detailed a significant milestone in the quest to send information between multiple cores — or “brains” — on a chip using pulses of light through silicon, instead of electrical signals on wires.
The breakthrough — known in the industry as a silicon Mach-Zehnder electro-optic modulator — performs the function of converting electrical signals into pulses of light. The IBM modulator is 100 to 1,000 times smaller in size compared to previously demonstrated modulators of its kind, paving the way for many such devices and eventually complete optical routing networks to be integrated onto a single chip. This could significantly reduce cost, energy and heat while increasing communications bandwidth between the cores more than a hundred times over wired chips.
Today, one of the most advanced chips in the world — IBM’s Cell processor which powers the Sony Playstation 3 — contains nine cores on a single chip. The new technology aims to enable a power-efficient method to connect hundreds or thousands of cores together on a tiny chip by eliminating the wires required to connect them. Using light instead of wires to send information between the cores can be 100 times faster and use 10 times less power than wires.
IBM’s optical modulator performs the function of converting a digital electrical signal carried on a wire, into a series of light pulses, carried on a silicon nanophotonic waveguide. First, an input laser beam is delivered to the optical modulator, which acts as a very fast “shutter” which controls whether the input laser is blocked or transmitted to the output waveguide.
When a digital electrical pulse arrives from a computer core to the modulator, a short pulse of light is allowed to pass through at the optical output. In this way, the device “modulates” the intensity of the input laser beam, and the modulator converts a stream of digital bits (“1”s and “0”s) from electrical signals into light pulses.
The report on this work, entitled “Ultra-compact, low RF power, 10 Gb/s silicon Mach-Zehnder modulator” by William M. J. Green, Michael J. Rooks, Lidija Sekaric, and Yurii A. Vlasov of IBM’s T.J.WatsonResearch Center in Yorktown Heights, N.Y. is published in Volume 15 of the journal Optics Express. This work was partially supported by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) through the Defense Sciences Office program “Slowing, Storing and Processing Light”.More at IBM.
On Nov 06, SiCortex, the emerging leader in compact, low power Linux clusters, introduced the SC072 “Catapult”, a 72 processor cluster in a whisper-quiet, low-power deskside cabinet. The Catapult, priced at under $15,000, fills a gaping hole in the high performance computing (HPC) application development infrastructure by providing routine personal access to large numbers of processors.
The Catapult, like all of SiCortex’s systems, features a standard Linux environment, enabling applications written and tested on the 72-processor machine to run on other SiCortex systems and be easily ported to the world’s largest supercomputers.
A survey of industrial HPC users by the Council on Competitiveness found a growing gap between the capabilities of modern HPC systems and availability of application software that can use them efficiently. Until now, application development has been hamstrung by lack of access to high processor count systems.
SiCortex has broken this productivity barrier by extending its product line down to a high processor count system that can sit beside every developer’s desk.
“High performance computers commonly have thousands of processors today, but cost considerations dictate that only a small fraction are available to developers,” said Dr. Christopher Kerr of the Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
“The Catapult will make an enormous difference in programmer productivity by providing a deskside resource for high processor count development.”
SiCortex has introduced a new concept in high-performance computing by implementing a complete cluster node on a chip, including six 64-bit processors, multiple memory controllers, a high-performance cluster interconnect and a PCIexpress connection to storage and internetworking. With a total of 72 processors, 48 GB memory, and 3 PCIexpress ports, the Catapult draws less than 200 watts of power and fits in standard PC chassis. This eliminates the heat and fan noise issues that have previously made it impossible to put such a large cluster in a deskside environment.
“The HPC industry is increasingly challenged by the reality that applications developed on one or two processors almost never scale to hundreds, much less thousands,” said SiCortex CEO Dr. John Mucci. “When you start with 50 or more processors, however, you’ve opened the door to the development of an entirely new generation of high performance software.” More at SiCortex.
Dec 25, `07 — DigiTimes is reporting on AMD adjusting its triple-core CPU model numbers and launch dates, citing sources at motherboard makers.
