Intel unveils futuristic chip

The world’s leading chipmaker, Intel Technologies, unveiled its futuristic chip which was developed with significant contributions from its research and development centre in Bangalore.

The concept chip, which has 48-cores called ‘single-chip cloud computer,’ has processing power 20 times higher than the ones currently being used. The chip developed over a period of two years saw a team of 40 people across three labs of Intel globally -- Hillsboro, US, Braunschweig, Germany and Bangalore contributing equally to the project.

The Bangalore lab contributed in the areas of circuit and physical design, memory controller logic and the mesh interconnect network. According to Vasantha Erranguntla, senior engineering manager, Intel Labs India, “The single-chip cloud computer was designed as a concept vehicle for parallel software research.”
For now, this concept chip would be largely used for academic and research purposes. Intel’s 48 core chip is also an extension of its earlier research called the teraflop processor which had 80 cores, in which the Bangalore centre had a major part to play.

Intel started its R&D operations in Bangalore in 1998 and it has grown to become one of the largest centre outside US with an estimated headcount in excess of 2,500.

The Bangalore R&D centre has also been part of the various commercial launches of Intel with most notable being the six-core x86 microprocessor called the Xeon 7400 series.

The Xeon 7400 series saw the Bangalore centre executing the end-to-end design activity and also for the first time working on the 45 nm technology.

On the 48 core chip, Intel is expecting the processor to get into commercial production only in the next three to four years. This could be largely used in the area of data centres or conducting very large computing applications.

Though for now, Intel is looking to engage industry and academia next year by sharing 100 or more of these experimental chips for hands-on research in developing new software applications and programming models.

Ms Erranguntla said they were also holding discussions with several research labs and universities in India also to be part of this concept chip.

12 little-known facts about IBM

Few companies are as well known as the IT giant IBM. The US-based company popularly known as 'Big Blue' is the global leader in hardware, software, services and consulting space. The company has who's who of the global business world as its clients and is among the top chipmakers in the world.

But few know that IBM is also the highest patent earner, has a long list of tech inventions to its credit and makes 35 of the world's 100 most powerful supercomputers.

eWeek has compiled a list of little-known facts about IBM. Here are few from the list.

Humble beginning
IBM was founded in 1896 as Tabulating Machine Company by Herman Hollerith in New York. It was incorporated as Computing Tabulating Recording Corporation on June 16, 1911, and was listed on the New York Stock Exchange in 1916. It became IBM in 1924 when Thomas J Watson took over.

Headquartered in Armonk, Town of North Castle, New York, the 283,000 square foot IBM building is located on a 25 acre site. With presence in more than 170 countries, IBM Global Services is among the world's largest business services provider.

Highest patent earner
In 2008, IBM became the first company to ever earn more than 4,000 US patents in a single year. According to the company, 2008's patent issuances were nearly triple that of Hewlett-Packard's and exceed the issuances of Microsoft, Hewlett-Packard, Oracle, Apple, EMC, Accenture and Google combined.

Inorganic kitty
Since the acquisition of Lotus in 1995, the company has been on an acquisition spree. IBM has bought more than 130 companies since then. Some of the companies acquired by the Big Blue include: Mainspring Business Strategy consulting, Informix Corporation Database Software, CrossWorlds Software, Metamerge, Trellisoft, Think Dynamics, Aptrix, Daksh e-Services, Venetica, Network Solutions Pvt Ltd.

Tech edge
IBM has a long list of technologies to its credit. The list includes: magnetic stripe, UPC bar codes, floppy disks, hard disk drives, vacuum tape drives, relational databases, Random Access Memory, RAMAC, the world's first computer disk storage system. IBM introduced the first computerised golf scoreboard at the 1967 Greater Dallas Open.

Women-friendly
With over 4 lakh employees worldwide, IBM is among the largest IT employer in the world. The company also boasts of a high number of senior women employees. According to reports, the company employs more than 1,000 senior women executives from mere 185 in 1997. Also, 65 per cent of IBM’s women executives are working mothers. More than 130,000 IBM employees and retirees are registered with the company's global volunteer programme called 'On Demand Community'.

Powers gaming giants
IBM provides processor chips that power world's top gaming giants, including Sony PlayStation, Nintendo Wii and Microsoft Xbox 360. In May 1997, Deep Blue (chess computer), a chess-playing computer developed by IBM created history by defeating world champion Garry Kasparov.







Global banks use IBM's mainframe
IBM's mainframe, the company's line of business computers, continues to be the choice of almost all top banks in the world. IBM in the first quarter of 2009, announced that its System Z mainframe business grew 37% in emerging markets such as China and India.









Nobel winners
Five IBMers have won Nobel Prizes for physics. Their names include Leo Esaki (1973), Gerd K Binnig and Heinrich Rohrer (1986), J Georg Bednorz and K Alex Mller (1987),

In addition to Nobel prizes, IBM researchers have been recognised with seven US National Medals of Technology, five National Medals of Science and 21 memberships in the National Academy of Sciences.





Supercomputer leader
According to TOP500 list of Supercomputers, IBM is a provider of 35 of the world's 100 most powerful supercomputers. Till recently, IBM's supercomputer Roadrunner held the top spot on the list of the World's top 10 fastest supercomputers.

However, according to the recent ranking, the world's fastest supercomputer is Cray XT5, also known as Jaguar. Jaguar bags the no. 1 spot, beating IBM's Roadrunner, which has been holding the top crown since past 18 months.



IBM's 3D avatar
In 2007, IBM researchers in Switzerland unveiled details of prototype visualization software that let doctors view medical data of patients using a 3D avatar of the human body. The Anatomic and Symbolic Mapper Engine (ASME) provides an interactive 3D model of the human body that displays health information at a glance. This helps doctors to visualise the medical history of their patients.

The company is also credited for playing a key role in developing the heart lung machine, for having invented the first continuous blood separator which is used to treat leukemia patients, and has helped develop the field of relaxometry which plays a role in medical magnetic resonance imagery (MRI).

Smart toll project
The company is credited for implementing a project that brought down traffic emission in Stockholm and channelised traffic movement. IBM worked with the City of Stockholm, Sweden to implement a smart toll systems to reduce gridlock, lower emissions and save the city’s residents time and money.

The system reduced traffic by 25%, and the city saw a drop in emissions from road traffic up to 14%. Greenhouse gases have fallen 40% in the inner city.

Revenue

IBM announced its third-quarter 2009 net income was $3.2 billion compared with $2.8 billion in the third quarter of 2008, an increase of 14%. Total revenues for the third quarter of 2009 was $23.6 billion, 1% up from the second quarter of 2009. IBM ended the third quarter of 2009 with $11.5 billion of cash on hand and generated free cash flow of $3.4 billion, excluding Global Financing receivables.

At the end of 2008, IBM recorded $103.6 billion in revenue, $12.3 billion net income and $109.5 billion total assets.

Six-core Intel Core i9 Gulftown Processor tests shows Boost in Performance

Intel's six-core Gulftown processors got delayed to second quarter of 2010 and was tested by Polish site PC Lab. This six-core Intel Gulftown processor is from the 32nm Westmere family flagship with 12MB shared L3 cache and compatible with Intel Socket LGA1366 based motherboards. As per the tests, this multi-core Gulftown chip showed 50 percent boost in the performance. These Gulftown lines up CPUs are likely to be dubbed as Core i9 chips.

PC Labs found that 2.86GHz clocked 32nm Core i9 'Gulftown' CPU showed about 50 percent faster video encoding and 3D modeling than the Core i7 with the same clock speed. Other multicore core tests didn't show large gains for the non-optimized tasks. Only when more multi-core utilization friendly applications will be released, the maximum would be made off the six cores. The memory speed and performance may not be as high as anticipated. Though BIOS for the available motherboards didn't offer any support, PC Labs guys managed to over clock the chip to 4.3GHz on the air cooling.

The 32nm die shrink brought significant reduction in power consumption and used less power as compared with its Core i7 and Core 2 Quad counterparts. The current engineering sample was able to carry maximum load at a temperature lower than the Core i7 chip. More efficient transistors are packed in the smaller 32nm die shrink so they will give power efficient performance as compared with the other Socket LGA1366 chips.

It's the additional two cores and hyperthreading support backed by appropriate power consumption that will prove true prowess of Gulftown chip. Intel is rumored to release this hexa-core chip in first quarter of 2010 and might get delayed to early second quarter.