Intel shows off a chip with 48 brains for cloud computing

You could call it the “single chip cloud computer,” or the beast with many brains. Intel showed off an experimental version of a 48-core microprocessor today.
With 48 cores, or processing brains, the single chip has 10 to 20 times the number of cores that Intel normally puts on its PC chips today. The company isn’t saying when it could do a commercial version of this chip, but it will make 100 of them for use in academia.
The goal of making the prototype now is to help programming experts figure out how to create software for such a chip. Intel made an experimental “terascale” chip with 80 cores in 2007. The research effort has been under way for about five years, said Justin Rattner, chief technology officer of Intel, at a press conference.
The new chip operates in a more energy efficient way, said analyst Jon Peddie of market researcher Jon Peddie Research. The 48-core chip operates on as little as 25 watts, which is typical for a lot of laptop computers. It operates at 125 watts when at maximum performance.
A machine using the chip could be capable of tough computing tasks such as better machine vision, or interacting with a computer for a virtual dance lesson or using a 3-D camera that shows you a mirror of how you would look wearing clothes that you might want to buy.