Tilera unveils plan for 100-core processor

Five-year old Tilera has unveiled plans for a new 100-core microprocessor as part of its third-generation offering of multi-core processors. Over the last two years, the company has rolled out chips with 36 and 64 processing cores as it attempts to capitalize on its unique architecture.

According to eWeek, the company's iMesh two-dimensional interconnect works like a communications switch to each core, eliminating the need for an on-chip bus. Together with a Dynamic Distributed Cache system that allows the local cache to be shared across the chip, Tilera officials say that its family of processors can scale "almost linearly with the number of cores."

The processors will come in various speeds up to 1.5GH, and Tilera officials claiming that its 10-core chip alone will offer four-times the performance of any current processor on the market,

Ultimately, its success hinges not solely on its technical prowess, but on its ease of programming and the needs of the market. Success hardly seems guaranteed though, as Tilera's 100-core processor is only expected to hit the market in the first quarter of 2011. In the meantime, established chip makers such as Intel and AMD are furiously developing processors with a greater number of cores.

For more on this story:
- check out this article at eWeek

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