Xeon5600
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Intel's gettin' kinda heavy, it's got the power, gonna break your heart
Intel spent most of yesterday standing in the bar at the SC11 conference showing off the size of its computing prowess. Admittedly, it's on a roll; the Xeon E5 processor powers ten of the Top 500 supercomputers in the world, and Intel chips as a whole are found inside 85 percent of all the machines on the list -- not to mention the E5's newly minted PCI Express 3.0 compatibility. The Santa Clara chip maker is also building a new Exascale lab at the Barcelona Computing Center, a ten petaflop "Stampede" machine at the Texas Advanced Computing center and several other machines for Government agencies like NASA. The Seattle shindig was a great excuse for Intel's Rajeeb Hazra to show off the new Knights Corner co-processor, built with a new Tri-Gate 3D 22nm process that packs 50 cores into one strip of silicon. In fact, the only thing Intel wasn't bragging about was being bested by the record breaking Fujitsu K, the mere mention of which caused everyone to go a little bit too quiet and begin to glower (we assume).
Tokyo Institute of Technology announces SSD-packing, 2.39 petaflop supercomputer
IBM has announced plans to start using SandForce SSDs in its enterprise machines, and now it looks like the Tokyo Institute of Technology is doing one better, working with NEC and HP to produce Tsubame 2.0. This next-gen supercomputer will reportedly operate at 2.39 petaflops (that's a lot of flops!) and uses a new multilevel storage architecture consisting of DRAM as well as SSDs. Not only will this bad boy have thirty times the computing capacity of Tsubame 1.0 (due in part to its some 2,816 Intel Westmere microprocessors and 4,224 NVIDIA Tesla M2050 GPUs), its power draw should be some 1/25th of its predecessor's. If all goes according to plan, it should be in operation this fall, at a cost of ¥3.2 billion (approx $35.5 million). [Thanks, Dylan]
Apple said to be preparing 12-core Mac Pros and 27-inch LED Cinema Displays
AppleInsider has rounded up its stable of "people familiar with the matter" and squeezed them for info on Cupertino's plans for the near term. Firstly, they've heard that a 27-inch version of the currently available 24-inch LED Cinema Display is on its way, sporting a 2,560 x 1,440 resolution and targeted for release "by June." The more exciting tip from those in the know, however, relates to the well aged Mac Pro and its future upgrade path. Apple has apparently firmed up plans to offer 6- and 12-core options (to replace the current 4- and 8-core variants), though the star of the show internally is said to be Intel's Xeon 5600, rather than the similarly specced Core i7-980X that had been rumored. This seems to be motivated by the fact the i7 beast can't do dual-CPU configurations, which are necessary to offer a dozen cores. Pricing for the single Xeon CPU model is expected to be close to the current $2,499 starting sticker, but release dates still elude us.
EVGA Classified SR-2 fits two Xeon CPUs for 24 threads, exemplifies overkill
Remember EVGA's seven-GPU motherboard monstrosity, the W555? That experimental beast of a board just got declassified -- and given immediate launch orders. Under the new "Classified SR-2" callsign, the board's layout has hardly changed since CES (though the heatsinks certainly got a makeover) but the big news here is that each of its two CPU sockets will support those fancy new six-core Xeon processors. As you're well aware, two times six is twelve -- and since each of the Xeon 5600's cores can handle 2 threads, you're looking at the basis for a 24-threaded powerhouse for mondo multitasking performance. Factor in enough slots for 4-way SLI, CrossFireX and 48GB of RAM, and it's not hard to figure out why the red-and-black HPTX (15- x 13.6-inches!) creation commands a $600 price point. The only questions are how much a full system will deplete your wallet, and how many fuses your house will blow after pressing the power button. Correction: Just a note that Intel's Core i7-980X isn't supported here, but the new Xeon 5600 CPUs are. %Gallery-88469%
