30 January 2012
Manycore processors shipping as Tilera targets data centres, networking
Following the unveiling of its TILE-Gx processor range in June 2011, multicore processor specialist Tilera has announced general availability of the TILE-Gx36 and TILE-Gx16 devices, as well as companion evaluation systems.
Bob Doud, marketing director, said: "We're at the point where we have a lot of customer engagement and pent up demand. We have customers with boards waiting for chips."
The TILE-Gx36 and TILE-Gx16 are 64bit processors with 36 and 16 cores respectively. Fabricated on a 40nm process, the devices are intended to compete with Intel's Xeon processors in data centre and networking applications. According to the company, aTILE-Gx36 based server can provide better performance than one based on the Xeon processor, while consuming 20% of the power and taking up much less space.
Doud claimed 'significant' customer interest for the devices. "We have 20 design wins," he noted, "where customers are laying out boards and expect revenues, and 80 engagements, where companies are considering the chip but where more work needs to be done."
Early customers include Harmonic and Mercury Computer Systems. Of the 80 engagements, 13 are in Europe, including some Tier 1 companies, said Doud.
"The TILE-Gx processor provides the performance and versatility we look for and, as such, we are using it as part of our next generation stream processing solutions," says Neven Haltmayer, Harmonic's senior vice president of research and development.
Doud said Harmonic had previously used fpgas for its video on demand servers. "But it found the programming model was difficult and it was taking a long time to add features. With the Tilera chip, it can code in C and the development cycle is faster."
* Meanwhile, Tilera cofounder Devesh Garg has been reappointed as chief executive. He served as the company's ceo from 2004 until 2007.
Author
Graham Pitcher
Supporting Information
Websites
http://www.tilera.com
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