Most people think running a PC with a processor that has four cores or even sixteen is top of the line for handling multiple tasks. Like all technology, CPU’s progresses further each year to bring us more cores on a single chip. However in the next few years we as consumers might have a processor with 1000 cores on a single chip (yeah I know, crazy right?) that will not require a massive amount of power to run. Scientists from the University of Glasgow, headed by Dr. Wim Vanderbauwhede, used Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) which like all microchips contains millions of transistors. This enabled the team to divide up the transistors within the chip into small groups and ask each to perform a different task. The chip was able to process around five gigabytes of data per second in testing - making it approximately 20 times faster than modern computers. The research scientists were able to make the processor faster by giving each core a certain amount of dedicated memory. “While many existing technologies currently make use of FPGAs, including plasma and LCD televisions and computer network routers, their use in standard desk-top computers is limited. ...However, we are already seeing some microchips which combine traditional CPUs with FPGA chips being announced by developers, including Intel and ARM” said Dr. Vanderbauwhede.
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