File photo (AP Photo/Paul Sakuma). (AP Photo/Paul Sakuma)
You think your PC gaming rig has a powerful processor? You haven’t seen anything yet. PC World reports that Intel wants to put its so-called Knights Landing chip into a limited number of workstation desktop computers starting next year. Knights Landing, which Intel says is its most powerful chip to date, is a 72-core processor with 8 billion transistors. Next year will mark the first time it’s been used in workstations.
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“A limited number of workstations will ship in the first half of next year from Intel, which will also control initial distribution,” PC World writes. “As usage expands, hopefully PC makers and other partners will sign on to sell Xeon Phi desktops… The Knights Landing chip can deliver over 3 teraflops of peak performance, which is roughly in the range of some high-performance graphics chips used in the world’s fastest supercomputers.”
In other words, it sounds like playing Star Wars: Battlefield on max settings on one of these machines would be pretty incredible. Of course, the average PC gamer isn’t going to be able to afford a workstation with a Knights Landing processor but it’s always nice to dream…
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