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Posts Tagged ‘Performance Degradation’

Tilera’s 100-core Tile-GX processor won’t boil the oceans, will still melt faces
Sixty-four, sixty-shmore… that’s so 2007 in terms of processing cores found in a single CPU: one hundred cores is where the future of computing resides. This magnificent engineering feat isn’t from AMD or even Intel, it’s the latest Tile-GX series of chips from the two-year old San Jose startup, Tilera. Its general purpose chips can run stand-alone or as co-processors running alongside those x86 chips that usually ship in four-, six-, or now eight-core configurations like Intel’s upcoming Nehalem-EX chip. Tilera’s 100-core chip pulls 55 watts at peak performance while its 16-core chip draws as little as 5 watts. Tilera uses the same mesh architecture as its previous 64-core chip in order to overcome the performance degradation accompanying data exchange on typical, multi-core processors — or so it says. Tilera’s new 40-nm process chips have cranked the clock to 1.5GHz and include support for 64-bit processing. And while its processors could be applied to any number of computing scenarios, Tilera’s focusing on lucrative markets like parallel-processing where its meager developer and marketing resources can extract a relatively quick payout. The fun begins in early 2011 with volume pricing set between $400 and $1000.

[Via PC World]

Filed under: Misc. Gadgets

Tilera’s 100-core Tile-GX processor won’t boil the oceans, will still melt faces originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 26 Oct 2009 03:16:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Carbon nanotubes find yet another purpose, could star in ultra-reliable batteries

Carbon nanotubes are kind of like peanuts. They both seem pretty simple at first glance, but with a little work, you can make pretty much anything out of ‘em. Take this case, for example, as MIT boffins have discovered that by forming the tube-shaped molecules of pure carbon into minuscule springs, they could be “capable of storing as much energy, pound for pound, as lithium-ion batteries.” The real kicker is exactly how they’d do it — “more durably and reliably.” Essentially, these newfangled cells could be left alone for years on end without losing their charge, and unlike conventional batteries, these wouldn’t suffer from performance degradation when exposed to temperature extremes. Of course, anything as pie-in-the-sky as this is probably at least a decade or so out from Walmart shelves, but considering that the group responsible has already filed a patent, we’d say they’re pretty confident in the possibilities.

[Via Physorg]

Filed under: Science

Carbon nanotubes find yet another purpose, could star in ultra-reliable batteries originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 21 Sep 2009 20:29:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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