2009.12.04 - here come the cores

just a few days ago i've wrote, after Herb Sutter, that the free lunch is over and here it comes – in response to AMD's 24-core computer shown on the beginning of the year, two days ago Intel shown 48-core processor (yes – procesor, not computer!). this time it seems to be far more than a show off. processor includes 48 fully equipped IA cores, arranged in pair of dual-cores, interconnected via 2D mesh network (24 nodes). article does not mention that, but it seems pretty sure that this is NUMA architecture. interesting topic is also efficiency of cache coherency protocol used there.

debate can be long, but in general the cutting edge technology trend is obvious.