256-Core Startup, Kalray, Just Out of the Starting Gate

Kalray, a young French manycore processor manufacturer, says it has already found 25 customers for its 256-core processor.

The MPAA chip targets low-power embedded systems and will be available with 256, 512, and 1,024 cores that deliver up to 920 GFlops at 400 MHz and 2.8 watts power consumption. Kalray has been developing the processor since 2008 and began sampling the 28 nm chip earlier this month. The product qualification is scheduled for November of this year.

The chip, which is organized as a 16 x 16 VLIW package, has made some waves, but the initial success is certainly surprising, given the fact that such processor typically have to deal with credibility issues in an industry that is counting on highly reliable chips. For newcomers, embedded applications is an especially tough market segment.

According to Kalray, its customers are "mainly" based in Europe, but the company believes it has "good prospects" in Japan and the U.S. in early 2013.

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Wolfgang Gruener is a contributor to Tom's IT Pro. He is currently principal analyst at Ndicio Research, a market analysis firm that focuses on cloud computing and disruptive technologies, and maintains the conceivablytech.com blog. An 18-year veteran in IT journalism and market research, he previously published TG Daily and was managing editor of Tom's Hardware news, which he grew from a link collection in the early 2000s into one of the most comprehensive and trusted technology news sources.

See here for all of Wolfgang's Tom's IT Pro articles.

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