From InfoWorld: In the rush to exascale computing, Intel is making a small change that could have a big impact on system design with its upcoming Xeon Phi chip.
Intel on Tuesday promised big performance and power improvements with the redesigned chip, code-named Knights Landing, which analysts said could ship next year or 2015. The chip will also have interconnect and memory advances, Intel has said, that could separate it from other co-processors like graphics processors, which are widely used to accelerate technical computing.
Knights Corner will have many cores and could function as a primary CPU in a supercomputer, or also as a co-processor that slides into a PCI-Express slot. That is a big change from the current Xeon Phi chip, code-named Knights Corner, which is available only as a co-processor and requires a server CPU like a Xeon E5 to host applications and run an OS.
"The chip itself is no longer a co-processor. It runs the OS and all of the computation on the same chip," said Nathan Brookwood, principal analyst at Insight 64.
Supercomputers today harness the joint computing power of CPUs and co-processors like the Phi or Nvidia's Tesla GPUs to process applications in areas such as medicine, defense, energy and science. But with Knights Landing functioning both as a primary CPU and accelerator, there is less need for extra components, which could reduce the size and cost of building a supercomputer.
"It dramatically increases performance because you don't have to move the data back and forth into memory and accelerator boards," Brookwood said, adding that fewer components means a lower energy bill.
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