[geeks] anyone know about this? 72-core, 48GB computer?

[nate at portents.com]

> Personally, I'd love to see a quad core ATOM (which I assume is in the
> pipeline, but that's pure speculation) on a little board that plugs into
> a backplane. Then you could do the same thing with processors that
> everyone knows and loves.

Not in the Intel roadmap.  Intel is not aiming for that market - their
plans are to get rid of the frontside bus, use a Direct Media Interface to
IO chips, and integrate a graphics core and memory controller into the
chip packaging.

It looks like Intel would love Atom to compete against ARM in the handset
and every other embedded market, which is one of the reasons I think they
recently acquired Wind River Systems.

What you're suggesting doesn't fit into what I've seen of their plans.

> Of course, you could just buy a bunch of ASUS EEE motherboards, with a
> rack type power supply and a 1000BASE-T hub in a cabinet to make a proof
> of concept unit. :-)

Rackable/SGI suggested a concept a little more polished:

http://www.tomshardware.com/news/intel-atom-sgi-molocule-supercomputer,6619.html

But it was just a concept.

- Nate