Researchers create new ultra-fast 1000 core processor which could make desktop computers 20 times faster.This core processor could usher in a new age of high-speed computing in the next few years for home users frustrated with slow-running systems…….
Scientists have created an ultra-fast 1,000 core computer processor which could speed up machines and make them greener.Originally, computers were developed with only one core processor, the part of a computer’s central processing unit (CPU) which reads and executes instructions.Nowadays processors with two, four or even 16 cores are commonplace.Dr Wim Vanderbauwhede of the University of Glasgow and colleagues at the University of Massachusetts Lowell have now created a processor which effectively contains more than a thousand cores on a single chip.
Scientists used a chip called a Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) which like all microchips contains millions of transistors – the tiny on-off switches which are the foundation of any electronic circuit.FPGAs can be configured into specific circuits by the user.Rather than their function being set at a factory ch enabled Dr Vanderbauwhede to divide up the transistors within the chip into small groups and ask each to perform a different task.
For creating more than 1,000 mini-circuits within the FPGA chip, the researchers effectively turned the chip into a 1,000-core processor and each core working on its own instructions.The researchers then used the chip to process an algorithm which is central to the MPEG movie format used in YouTube videos at a speed of five gigabytes per second, around 20 times faster than current top-end desktop computers.Dr Vanderbauwhede hopes to present his research at the International Symposium on Applied Reconfigurable Computing in March next year.