80 Core Central Processing Unit

Intel has developed an 80-core processor prototype that it plans to roll out within the next five years.

Intel CEO Paul Otellini demonstrated the 80-core behemoth at the Intel Developer Forum in San Francisco on Tuesday. According to Otellini, the chip is capable of transferring a terabyte of data per second. As Intel’s powerful Core 2 Duo chip is able to trasfer only 1.66 gigabytes of data per second, the proposed 80-core chip would represent a several hundred fold increase over the performance in today’s processors.

Otellini also confirmed the release of the upcoming Quad-core processors at the conference, with the 2.66 Ghz Core 2 Extreme being released in November at a stanard $1,000 US. Core 2 Quadro, the mainstream version of the processor, will be released in Q1 2007 with a clock speed of a respectable 2.4Ghz.

While information of the quad-core chips was already known, it’s always nice to hear it straight from the horse’s mouth. Especially if the horse is holding several 80-core processors in his hands.