Researchers build the world's first 1,000 core CPU

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By Matthew Griffin Computing 6th July 2016

WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF

The Kilocore chip represents a step change in CPU power and efficiency.

Most of todays great advances in science and technology have been the direct result of the massive increase in computing power that we’ve seen over the past 40 years. AI, for example wouldn’t be possible if it wasn’t for today’s computing power and neither would our ability to secure global communications or analyse trillions of different chemical variations to find the next blockbuster drug. Companies have been struggling to keep pace with Moore’s Law, economically at least, for years now but technically, whether it’s thanks to Molecular Computing or innovations like the Kilocore there are still a multitude of ways to squeeze more and more performance from Silicon.

These days we’re having to get increasingly used to some fairly big numbers in terms of core counts for processors such as Intel’s whopping 72 core Knights Landing supercomputing chip but researchers have just topped that figure – and then some by building a 1,000 core brute of a chip that’s capable of carrying out 1.78 trillion instructions per second.

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Dubbed the KiloCore chip by the team that built it at the University of California it’s the world’s first 1,000 core chip, the previous title holders only managing to fit a paltry 300 cores on their version and, furthermore, and just to rub salt into the wound it has the highest clock rate ever demonstrated for a “many core” chip.

It’s also the most energy efficient capable of executing 115 billion instructions per second using just 0.7W. Putting that into perspective that makes it a hundred times more efficient than the CPUs find inside a modern laptop and means that the chip could be powered by just one AA battery.

Sadly for those technophiles among you though it’s unlikely you’ll ever get your hands on such a monster. Most multi core chips of this size almost never make it into mass production, often confined to running instructions that support someone’s in house research project but with such a large core count and high clock rate it’s almost inevitable that people who need large amounts of parallel data processing, such as video or encryption will be salivating to get their hands on it.

Matthew Griffin / About Author

Matthew Griffin, described as “The Adviser behind the Advisers” and a “Young Kurzweil,” is the founder and CEO of the World Futures Forum and the 311 Institute, a global Futures and Deep Futures consultancy working across the next 50 years, and is an award winning futurist, and author of “Codex of the Future” series.

Regularly featured in the global media, including AP, BBC, Bloomberg, CNBC, Discovery, RT, Viacom, and WIRED, Matthew’s ability to identify, track, and explain the impacts of hundreds of revolutionary emerging technologies on global culture, industry and society, is unparalleled. Recognised for the past six years as one of the world’s foremost futurists, innovation and strategy experts Matthew is an international speaker who helps governments, investors, multi-nationals and regulators around the world envision, build and lead an inclusive, sustainable future.

A rare talent Matthew’s recent work includes mentoring Lunar XPrize teams, re-envisioning global education and training with the G20, and helping the world’s largest organisations envision and ideate the future of their products and services, industries, and countries.

Matthew's clients include three Prime Ministers and several governments, including the G7, Accenture, Aon, Bain & Co, BCG, Credit Suisse, Dell EMC, Dentons, Deloitte, E&Y, GEMS, Huawei, JPMorgan Chase, KPMG, Lego, McKinsey, PWC, Qualcomm, SAP, Samsung, Sopra Steria, T-Mobile, and many more.