Intel, Microsoft Fund Multicore Research

Future products call for chips with many more microprocessors
By Laila Weir,  Newser Staff
Posted Mar 17, 2008 12:50 PM CDT
Intel, Microsoft Fund Multicore Research
Intel Corp. Vice President and Chief Technology Officer Justin Rattner briefs the media in Bangalore, India, Wednesday, Jan. 16, 2008.    (AP Photo/Aijaz Rahi)

Intel and Microsoft will fund researchers at two universities working on new programming techniques for multicore chips, sources told the Wall Street Journal. The companies will reportedly provide $2 million annually for five years, to speed the development of chips that can contain dozens—or even hundreds—of microprocessors of multiple types. One of the grants is expected to go to UC Berkeley.

"Everybody is madly racing toward multicore technology, and they don't have a clue about how to program it," said one Stanford professor. Possible applications include media-rich programs like 3-D imaging, pattern recognition, and financial analysis, all of which require hardware/software combinations that can process large, complicated quantities of data. (More Intel stories.)

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