Intel is using the phrase ‘terascale computing’ to describe their multicore efforts. An article on the Intel Web site titled Intel’s Tera-Scale Research Prepares for Tens, Hundreds of Cores describes more about this effort toward hundreds of CPU cores on a die.
An author identified only as The High End Crusader publishes these provocative articles that get picked up by the HPC Wire. This one is especially interesting. A bit long, but worth the effort. Thanks to Professor Stan Sedukhin at U. Aizu in Japan for the pointer to this article.
The Stanford Hot Chips conference has a definite multicore flavor this year. There will be multicore related presentations and tutorials from Sun, Intel, AMD, IBM, Phillips, and several other big guys, as well as new information about products information from smaller companies like Ambric and Connex Technology.
Raza Microelectronics, maker of MIPS-based multicore processors, has announced that it will buy the embedded processor group from AMD in return for investment from AMD in Raza (see: Advanced Micro Devices to Invest in Raza ). This AMD embedded group is from the earlier acquisition of Alchemy Semiconductor, which specialized in low-power MIPS-baesd processors. The founder of Raza Microelectronics, Atiq Raza, is also no stranger to AMD. His company NexGen was acquired by AMD and became the base for the latter K-series series of x86 processors. Mr. Reza also served as President of AMD.
A good article from the HPC Wire titled Is the Cell Processor Poised for HPC Stardom?