This week, Intel and the Barcelona Supercomputing Centre (BSC) stated they might make investments €400 million (round $426 million) in a laboratory that can develop RISC-V-based processors that might be used to construct zettascale supercomputers. Nonetheless, the lab won’t focus solely on CPUs for next-generation supercomputers but additionally on processor makes use of for synthetic intelligence purposes and autonomous automobiles.
The analysis laboratory will presumably be arrange in Barcelona, Spain, and can obtain €400 million from Intel and the Spanish Authorities over 10 years. The basic function of the joint analysis laboratory is to develop chips primarily based on the open-source RISC-V instruction set structure (ISA) that might be used for a variety of purposes, together with AI accelerators, autonomous automobiles, and high-performance computing.
The creation of the joint laboratory doesn’t routinely imply that Intel will use RISC-V-based CPUs developed within the lab for its first-generation zettascale supercomputing platform however quite signifies that the corporate is keen to make further investments in RISC-V. In spite of everything, final 12 months, Intel tried to purchase SiFive, a number one developer of RISC-V CPUs and is among the many high sponsors of RISC-V Worldwide, a non-profit group supporting the ISA.
Whereas round $21.3 million is a big sum of cash, Intel will likely be pouring much more into its x86-based merchandise within the coming years, so spending on RISC-V processors doesn’t imply a decrease deal with x86 designs. Quite the opposite, all through its historical past, Intel invested lots of of hundreds of thousands in non-x86 architectures (together with RISC-based i960/i860 designs within the Eighties, Arm within the 2000s, and VLIW-based IA64/Itanium within the Nineteen Nineties and the 2000s). Ultimately, these architectures have been dropped, however applied sciences developed for them discovered their manner into x86 choices.
With its RISC-V efforts, Intel might be killing a number of birds with one stone. First, suppose engineers from the joint laboratory handle to design a CPU know-how that’s extra appropriate for ZettaFLOPS-class supercomputers. In that case, Intel will have the ability to use it for its merchandise. As an added bonus, Intel’s Foundry Providers division will possible turn out to be a fab of alternative for CPUs/SoCs developed within the joint lab.
“Excessive-performance computing is the important thing to fixing the world’s most difficult issues, and we at Intel have an bold purpose to dash to zettascale period for HPC,” stated Jeff McVeigh, vp and basic supervisor of the Tremendous Compute Group at Intel. “Barcelona Supercomputing Heart shares our imaginative and prescient for this purpose, with equal emphasis on sustainability and an open method. We’re excited to accomplice with them to embark on this journey.”
Final 12 months Intel set itself an bold purpose to construct a ZettaFLOPS-class supercomputer platform by 2027, which suggests to extend the efficiency of supercomputers by 1000 instances in about 5 years. The corporate stated it could want new compute architectures, new system architectures, high-speed reminiscence and I/O interfaces, novel fabrication applied sciences, and complex chip packaging strategies, amongst different issues. One of many firm’s methods to radically enhance compute efficiency is to construct an structure that might mix the corporate’s x86 general-purpose cores with Xe-HPC compute GPUs. The primary product that makes use of this idea is Falcon Shores (opens in new tab) — which is already in improvement.
