Intel is developing a 48-core processor for mobile devices

Intel scientists are working on a 48-core chip for smartphones and tablets. Such a chip will significantly increase the computing power of mobile devices and at the same time reduce power consumption, Vesti.ru reports. However, the result is expected not so soon, the development can take from five to ten years. This became known from an interview with employees of the Barcelona Laboratory of Intel, published by TechWorld.

According to Enrik Errero, a researcher at the laboratory, now the processor with one core consistently solves one problem after another, and if it works at the limit, it consumes quite a lot of energy. The multi -core can separate the tasks between the nuclei, simultaneously serving several resource -intensive applications at once.

In modern processors there are up to 4 active nuclei. Such models include Snapdragon S4 (Qualcomm) and TEGRA 3 (NVIDIA), built on the architecture of ARM. The latter has another, fifth "auxiliary" core. To save energy, it works at a lower frequency and is responsible for performing the tasks undemanding to the performance of the processor.

According to Intel, the first samples of 48-core processors will be available in five to ten years. The company believes that over time, smartphones and tablets will become so productive that they can completely replace the computer. One of the possible options for using multi -core processors is to create an operating system that launches each application on a separate core.

The difficulty, however, lies not so much in developing the chip as to teach the programs to use so many nuclei and receive an increase in speed or reduce energy consumption.

Intel has long been experimenting with multi -core chips. Last year, the company manufactured the Knights Corner processor, which has more than fifty computing nuclei and a performance level of over 1 theraflops (trillion of operations with a floating comma per second). It was created for the Stampede supercomputer, which is designed for the University of Texas in Austin and will be launched in January 2013.