[LINK] 1000 core CPU achieved. (5 GB per sec. MPEG rendering)

[Tom Koltai]

Quote/
Scientists at the University of Massachusetts Lowell laugh in the face
of Intel's weedy handful of cores in its new CPU lineup: They've just
squeezed
<http://www.physorg.com/news/2011-01-scientists-cores-chip.html>  over a
thousand processor cores onto a single chip. 

We've heard a lot about the potential for future desktop
<http://www.fastcompany.com/1662937/amd-cpus-quad-core-cloud-computing-c
hips-supercomputer-power-saving> -sized supercomputers
<http://www.fastcompany.com/blog/kit-eaton/technomix/creative-outs-its-z
ii-stemcell-media-system-chip> , but more than anything else this
research proves that in the not-too-distant future it's likely to be a
reality. Interestingly enough, there's also a green angle to this idea:
FPGA chips can be more power efficient than their competitors, and if
less computer time is needed to process complex tasks, then the overall
power consumption of computers using the tech could be impressively low.

The advance was made by Dr. Wim Vanderbauwhede's team, who programmed an
advanced chip called a Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA). FPGA
systems have been around for a while, and their strength is that they
can be programmed "in the field" to best suit whatever task they're
needed for, unlike the hard-coded silicon ship designs you're probably
imagining. The UM team's innovation was in working out how to program
the FPGA to act as mini processor cores, since the tech is typically
difficult to work with. This has traditionally been a barrier to their
use in desktop PCs, although small FPGAs are often found inside devices
like LCD TVs. 

Once the 1,000 individual CPU cores had been programmed onto the chip,
the scientists took the necessary next step to prove how useful their
innovation is: They ran an intensive algorithm through it to test how
powerful it was, and they chose a tricky one too--at the core of motion
MPEG video processing, used in many online video systems. The results
speak for themselves. Using the kilo-core FPGA computer, the team was
able to process 5 gigabytes per sec of movie files, which is about 20
times the rate that existing high-end computers can manage.

/Quote

We live in interesting times... Moores WHAT ?