Firm launches 64-processor chip for video, networks

A SILIVALLEY start up has announced a chip with 64 brains on it, which is intended to speed up video and networking.

Tilera is introducing the Tile 64 family of chips which criss cross using an "Imesh" network.

According to the firm, each of the processors, or "tiles" as it chooses to call the brains, includes L1 and L2 cache and a switch which lets them mesh all together.

Each "tile" can run an independent operating system or a meshed OS like Linux SMP.

Pity there's no longer 64 independent OSes.

According to Tilera, the chips don't need north bridge or south bridges and each has a complete set of memory and IO controllers.

Apps for the chips, which won't compete with the X86 monsters, include unified threat management, network security appliances, video conferencing, video surveillance (ooh er) and media head end services.

The guys have even got a pretty block diagram for the thingie, below. The received wisdom from the world+dog is that chips with more brains are better than chips with only one. In ancient times, Lotus wanted to upgrade 1-2-3 to version 4.0 of 1-2-3 and hired loads and loads more brains to work on the upgrade. Trouble is, all the brains took forever to produce version 4.0 by which time Microsoft Excel, with far fewer brains, pipped Lotus to the past. [Shorely post, Ed?] µ