Big boost for Linux...

It would appear that Linux is really poised to get a big, big chunk of the PC market for some really odd reasons. Tilera, a new Silicon Valley startup is shipping a 64 cpu processor on a chip that delivers 30x the performance of a 3MHz Xeon processor while drawing 20 watts (the Xeon draws nearly 90 watts).

Most people aren't aware that a big chunk of OS that allows Linux to run on clusters of processors is delivered with the basic download, thus, Linux was rather easy to port to this new chip. Microsoft hasn't got anything comparable even being developed, to the best of my knowledge.

Tilera has also done a rather interesting thing. They deliver their new chip with a parallel processing IDE built around C which is piggybacked on Eclipse.

Looking at this chip I think that the networking companies like Cisco and the gaming companies are going to go nutsoid about this thing. They've already just about cracked the DirectX standard that Microsoft has been trying to keep in-house to Windows. This on top of that could put Linux way, way into the mainstream for high performance computing.

[www.tilera.com]

holy crap.

It gets better. That chip's architecture scales to 1024 cpu's. Each one of those cpu's will, I understand, handle two HDTV signal streams for on-the-fly signal processing. Can you imagine how this chip will handle something like AoI reprogrammed for massively parallel processing, something that 3D modeling is eminently suited for?

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 08/29/2007 03:40PM by Forrest Higgs.

The trend has been to move more and more graphics proccessing to support chips; a CPU like this could reverse the trend.

Wow... i'm not an expert but i'm curious: what could be the pricetag for this monster?

The chip is shipping for $455 in bulk orders at the moment.

Ohh...

I want a motherboard and chipset that will use it...

Preferably laptop.

Here the creator of the Tilera chip gets down to the nitty gritty.

[sramanamitra.com]