Intel’s Xeon Phi chips are typically reserved for supercomputing. Well Intel is looking to change the game by bringing their upcoming 72-core Xeon Phi chip code-named Knights Landing to the desktop workstation market. There will be a limited number of workstations shipping in the first half of next year from Intel, who will also control the initial distribution.
Charles Wuischpard, general manager of the HPC Platform group at Intel says that as usage of the platform continues PC markers and other partners will sign on to tell Xeon Phi desktops.
Workstation desktops are typically used for high-end graphics, film and audio editing, and engineering applications. The ones you see today are mainly based off of Intel’s Core desktop processors or Xeon server chips.
The Supercomputing workstation as its being touted will be initially available for researchers who do not have access to Xeon Phi-based supercomputers for complex scientific calculations. Researchers will then be able to write and test code on the computer before it is deployed on supercomputers.
Coprocessors like the original Xeon Phi and NVIDIA’s Quadro are already being used alongside Intel CPUs in workstations to boost performance. But this new Supercomputing workstation will have only a single Knights Landing chip which will load the OS and increase application performance.
The Knights Landing chip can provide over 3 teraflops of peak performance.
Source: PC World | News Archive
