Intel develops teraflop-chip

Intel has developed a teraflop chip with supercomputer-like performance but has "no plans" to bring the 80-core chip to market.

The super-chip - about the size of a fingernail - has the ability to deliver trillions of calculations per second, moving terabytes of data while consuming only 62 watts of electricity - less power than most single-core processors.

You what…?

Bust through tech jargon with silicon.com's Cheat Sheets.

But don't expect to see the chip in computers - Intel said although the chip offers insights into new chip designs, as well as energy efficient computers, there are "no plans" to bring this exact model to market.

Justin Rattner, Intel CTO, said the chip is a "key milestone" in computer performance research and points the way to a future when teraflop-capable designs will be commonplace.

Intel has been making its chips smaller of late and completed its design of Penryn - a 45-nanometre chip - last year.

The chip is a result of Intel's tera-scale computing facility aimed at delivering teraflop - trillions of calculation per second - performance to future computers.