Intel Takes Curtains Off Knights Landing

The leading American multinational semiconductor chip makers have unveiled their latest effort in the field of supercomputing: the Knights Landing. The successor of Knights Corner will make its debut in 2015 and is all set to bring the world up to speed with its up to 72-core, next generation Xeon Phi supercomputing chip. The Intel innovation is said to have lightning speed with 500GB/sec of memory bandwidth (along with up to 384GB of DDR4-2400 mainboard memory). Knights Landing will make an entrance on Intel’s 14nm process and is likely to be equipped with 3 teraflops (double precision) per socket which will make the Knights Landing the beating heart of monstrous 100+ petaflop x86 supercomputers.

Knights Landing is a huge step forward as compared to its predecessor Knights Corner. The forerunner which is currently ruling the supercomputing world is a PCIe expansion board with an up to 61-core Intel MIC (Many Integrated Core) chip. The P54C cores will be replaced with up to 72 out-of-order Silvermount (Atom) cores in the newer version of the chip. One of the most significant changes that have occurred is the ability of Knights Landing as a standalone CPU, integrated with six-channel DDR4-2400 memory controller, up to 16GB of on-package 3D stacked RAM, and 36 PCIe 3.0 lanes.

With all these upgrades the 2015 chipset is expected to take the supercomputing world to a whole new level. With ongoing research and development the availability of such a supercomputing chip is welcomed by industries all over the world.