Complex Insight - Understanding our world

The advent of Intel's massively parallel coprocessor will make every server a supercomputer. This week, Intel unveiled its new Xeon Phi coprocessor, which puts an astonishing 50 x86 cores onto a single PCI-connected card. The term "coprocessor" should be understood in context. Every one of the Phi's cores can boot Linux and run any x86 software. However, the card itself needs to plug into a system that has an independent CPU, which basically oversees the Phi's operations. Hence, the coprocessor appellation. The first model to be released in Q1 of next year will have 50 cores, and the follow-up coprocessor slated for release in mid-2013 will have 60 cores. Each processor supports four threads, making for 200 threads for the initial Phi. The cores run at 1.05 GHz and sport a 512-KB L2 cache each. They collectively share 8 GB of GDDR5 memory. They will liely compete with GPU based solutions from NVIDIA and AMD - but with a more familiar programmign model. Things just got very interesting in the high performance compute world. Click on the image or the title to learn more.

Microsoft Research will present its Faculty Summit accessible by the public. On July 16 and 17, 9:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m. Pacific Standard Time (PST) (noon to 5:00 p.m. Eastern Standard Time). The summit gives an opportunity to hear leading academic researchers and educators, as well as Microsoft researchers, product group engineers, and architects explore new opportunities in computer science research and advances that address real-world challenges. Should be at least and hopefully awesome.  Click on the image or title to learn more.