Intel Promises Era of Exascale Computing

Submitted by lalit on June 21, 2011 - 8:06pm.

If PetaFLOP isn’t enough for you Intel has promised Exascale computing for you. At the International Supercomputing Conference (ISC), Kirk Skaugen, Intel Corporation vice president and general manager of the Data Center Group, outlined the company's vision to achieve ExaFLOP/s performance by the end of this decade. An ExaFLOP/s is quintillion computer operations per second, hundreds times more than today's fastest supercomputers.

"While Intel Xeon processors are the clear architecture of choice for the current TOP500 list of supercomputers, Intel is further expanding its focus on high-performance computing by enabling the industry for the next frontier with our Many Integrated Core architecture for petascale and future exascale workloads," said Skaugen. "Intel is uniquely equipped with unparalleled manufacturing technologies, new architecture innovations and a familiar software programming environment that will bring us closer to this exciting exascale goal."

Intel believes MIC (Many Integrated Core) architecture will help lead the industry into the era of exascale computing. The first Intel MIC product, codenamed "Knights Corner," is planned for production on Intel's 22-nanometer technology that featuring innovative 3-D Tri-Gate transistors. Intel is currently shipping Intel MIC software development platforms, codenamed "Knights Ferry," to select development partners.

Intel plans to bring exascale computing to the market by 2018 with help of MIC architecture as a single MIC chip can easily achieve 650 GFLOPs of performance.