Intel Tera-Scale

Intel Tera-Scale is a research program by Intel that focuses on development in Intel processors and platforms that utilize the inherent parallelism of emerging visual-computing applications. Such applications require teraFLOPS of parallel computing performance to process terabytes of data quickly.[1] Parallelism is the concept of performing multiple tasks simultaneously. Utilizing parallelism will not only increase the efficiency of computer processing units (CPUs), but also increase the bytes of data analyzed each second. In order to appropriately apply parallelism, the CPU must be able to handle multiple threads and to do so the CPU must consist of multiple cores. The conventional amount of cores in consumer grade computers are 2–8 cores while workstation grade computers can have even greater amounts. However, even the current amount of cores aren't great enough to perform at teraFLOPS performance leading to an even greater amount of cores that must be added. As a result of the program, two prototypes have been manufactured that were used to test the feasibility of having many more cores than the conventional amount and proved to be successful.

  1. ^ Held, Jim; Bautista, Jerry; Koehl, Sean (2006). "From a Few Cores to Many: A Tera-scale Computing Research Overview" (PDF). White Paper Research at Intel. Intel Corporation. Retrieved 28 October 2014.