Intel said that it plans to launch a new high performance computing (HPC) optimised version of its forthcoming processor codenamed Nehalem-EX in the first half of 2010.
The company said that the 6-core chip will run at higher frequencies than 8-core versions of the Nehalem-EX processors and will offer advantages on some HPC workloads. It allows customers to build up to supercomputers with up to 256 such chips.
The company also said that a beta program for its Ct technology will be available by the end of 2009. Intel Ct technology makes parallel programming in the C and C++ languages easier by automatically parallelising code across multi-core and many-core processors.
Intel also announced that it is partnering with NEC to jointly develop high performance computing (HPC) system technologies to push the boundaries of supercomputing performance. It said that NEC will bring these technologies to market in future supercomputers based on the Intel Xeon processor.
Reportedly, NEC will also continue to sell their existing SX vector processor-based products. The initial focus of the collaboration will be the development of hardware and software offerings to enhance the memory bandwidth and scalability of Intel Xeon processor-based platforms.
Richard Dracott, general manager of high performance computing group at Intel, said: Intel’s substantial investment in the Intel architecture, including the development of processors, chipsets, software compilers and other related products has expanded the usages of Intel Xeon processors in both the volume and high-end HPC market segments.
“Now with NEC further innovating on Intel Xeon processor-based systems, Intel is poised to bring Intel Xeon processor performance to an even wider supercomputing audience.
