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The biggest thing in CPU technology right now seems to be how many cores someone can fit on a chip, then how fast those cores will run.  Intel right now looks to be leading the pack with its quad-core Core i7, and rightfully so, that chip is awesome.  A new company spun out of M.I.T., Tilera, promises to multiply that number by 25, with 100 cores per chip.

Tilera is claiming that these chips will be available by early 2010, and should work with current x86 applications after a recompiling.  If that sounds foreign, just know that it will work with current applications with some slight modifications.  The chip manages to achieve 100 cores by assembling them in a grid on the chip surface, and connecting them via a mesh network.  The result should end up with a chip that can easily turn off and on the cores as needed, and still work reasonably well with existing memory.  The chips should provide enough processing power to do just about anything needed, like the Core i7.

The major downfall with Tilera’s chips is that they won’t be able to run Windows 7, or anything out right now.  With a different architecture, the Tilera chips will not be capable of running anything until an OS of some sort supports it.  Perhaps a Linux distribution (Ubuntu?) will at least get some code for the new CPUs.  If the chips are as powerful as Tilera is promising, they should be able to handle anything Linux could throw at them.  They would serve well for a server of some sort, or an ultra-powerful Linux desktop as of right now.  If nothing else, hopefully this will push Intel into getting their 80-core prototype CPU out as soon as possible.

Read [Wired]
Read [Tilera]