From our front-page news:
Tilera isn't a name you see on our pages too often (alright, never), because their products almost have nothing to do with what we normally deal with, such as desktop CPUs... or products you'd have in your machine at home. Their processors are interesting, though, because although they are designed for certain purposes (embedded, DSP, FPGA, x86), the numbers they boast can catch anyone's attention.
According to the company, the new TILEPro64 processors are twice as fast as the previous generation, and offer a 35x better performance/watt ratio over Intel Xeon Quad-Cores. Despite the hefty jump in performance over their previous generation, the new processors manage to increase power consumption by only 5%.
The reason that Tilera's processors excel in what they do is because the "64" in the name doesn't denote 64-bit integer support, but rather the fact that it contains 64 cores. Squeeze 700MHz into each, and it's easy to understand in theory just how whipped a Xeon processor could be. It's far faster, and uses less power. It might make you wonder why their processors aren't being used in desktops, but it comes down to the fact that Intel and AMD processors are far more robust, and are designed for general purpose, not a relatively set purpose, like is needed in the industry.
Another note of interest, is that while the architecture itself is different, standard C/C++ code can be written, and since most of Tilera's customers use Linux in some way or another, their processors work with the OS relatively simply. The downside is that not anyone can go ahead and code for the platform, or even purchase the tools required unless you want to pony up some cash. As it stands, Tilera is a relatively small company, but if their products continue to impress, maybe we'll be hearing about them a lot more in the future.
Just over a year after launching the world's highest performance embedded processor, Tilera Corporation today announced its TILEPro family of processors, setting a new benchmark for performance. The TILEPro family includes two new processors: the TILEPro64 delivers 35X better performance per-watt over the Quad-Core Xeon, and 15X the performance of the DaVinci DM6467 series DSP; while the TILEPro36 carries Tilera's performance, power efficiency, and programmability into mid-range applications.
Source: Tilera Press Release
According to the company, the new TILEPro64 processors are twice as fast as the previous generation, and offer a 35x better performance/watt ratio over Intel Xeon Quad-Cores. Despite the hefty jump in performance over their previous generation, the new processors manage to increase power consumption by only 5%.
The reason that Tilera's processors excel in what they do is because the "64" in the name doesn't denote 64-bit integer support, but rather the fact that it contains 64 cores. Squeeze 700MHz into each, and it's easy to understand in theory just how whipped a Xeon processor could be. It's far faster, and uses less power. It might make you wonder why their processors aren't being used in desktops, but it comes down to the fact that Intel and AMD processors are far more robust, and are designed for general purpose, not a relatively set purpose, like is needed in the industry.
Another note of interest, is that while the architecture itself is different, standard C/C++ code can be written, and since most of Tilera's customers use Linux in some way or another, their processors work with the OS relatively simply. The downside is that not anyone can go ahead and code for the platform, or even purchase the tools required unless you want to pony up some cash. As it stands, Tilera is a relatively small company, but if their products continue to impress, maybe we'll be hearing about them a lot more in the future.
Just over a year after launching the world's highest performance embedded processor, Tilera Corporation today announced its TILEPro family of processors, setting a new benchmark for performance. The TILEPro family includes two new processors: the TILEPro64 delivers 35X better performance per-watt over the Quad-Core Xeon, and 15X the performance of the DaVinci DM6467 series DSP; while the TILEPro36 carries Tilera's performance, power efficiency, and programmability into mid-range applications.
Source: Tilera Press Release