Intel Unveils Details About Research Near-Threshold Voltage Processor

From X-bit Labs: At the Intel Developer Forum the world’s largest maker of semiconductors unveiled additional details about its research x86-compatible Near-Threshold Voltage Processor (NTVP) that uses novel ultra-low voltage circuits. The chip consumes milliwats of power and its technology will not allow x86 to compete head-to-head against ARM, but will also let Intel cut down power consumption of many-core chips for exascale supercomputers.

"Since 2006 Intel and the IA developer community have worked in partnership to realize the potential of multi- and many-core computing, with accelerating impact beyond high-performance computing to solving a wide range of real-world computing problems on clients and servers. What we have demonstrated today only scratches the surface of what will be possible with many-core and extreme scale computing systems in the future,” said Justin Rattner , chief technology officer of Intel, during his IDF keynote.

At the Intel Developer Forum the company demonstrated a Near-Threshold Voltage Processor. Using novel, ultra-low voltage circuits that dramatically reduce energy consumption by operating close to threshold, or turn-on voltage, of the transistors. This concept CPU runs fast when needed but drops power to below 10 milliwatts when its workload is light – low enough to keep running while powered only by a solar cell the size of a postage stamp.

While the research chip will not become a product itself, the results of this research could lead to the integration of scalable near-threshold voltage circuits across a wide range of future products, reducing power consumption by 5-fold or more and extending always-on capability to a wider range of computing devices. Technologies such as this will further Intel Labs' goal to reduce energy consumption per computation by 100- to 1000-fold for applications ranging from massive data processing at one end of the spectrum to terascale-in-a-pocket at the other.

Just like the famous research single-chip cloud computer (SCC), the code-named NTVP Claremont sports the super-scalar Pentium core without out-of-order execution capability. Though the same techniques could be applied to any Intel digital designs in the future, according to Intel's Sriram Vangal.

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