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Prodigy chip brainiacs Tachyum hook up with Euro HPC consortium

Happy-clappy club wants to 'democratize' supercomputing

Silicon design startup Tachyum has joined the Open Euro High Performance Computing Project (OEUHPC), a consortium that aims to "democratise" supercomputing by building systems along Open Compute Project principles.

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Xeon-bashing Tachyum claims its Prodigy CPU will run AI jobs as well as traditional apps

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Brainchild of co-founder and CEO Dr Radoslav Danilak, Tachyum is developing what it has called the Prodigy Universal Processor Chip, claiming it to be the smallest and fastest general purpose, 64-core processor to date, requiring 10x less power and reducing costs by 3x compared to X86 CPUs.

The firm, which last year announced it would open an EU R&D Center in Slovakia, has previously vowed to unveil its Prodigy universal processor by the end of 2019. Tachyum has some not-so-humble ambitions for the CPU: it's looking to make the smallest and fastest general purpose, 64-bit processor available, requiring 10x less power and reducing server cost by 3x.

The chip has fewer and shorter wires than an x86 CPU, due to its smaller, simpler core, Tachyum has said, claiming its compiler makes many parts of the hardware found in a typical processor redundant.

The outfit has been working with system integrators to build a "32 Tensor ExaFLOPS AI supercomputer in 2020" ahead of the scheduled EU goal to achieve exascale computing by 2028.

Lash enough Prodigy chips together and you can, Danilak claimed, build a neural network to simulate the human brain (and its 86 billion neurons). "The capability to simulate the human brain in real time is no longer a 'Can we do it?' question but rather a 'How soon can we get it done?' challenge," he said.

Tachyum said it has built partnerships to help deliver supercomputer and cloud systems so the EU can exploit the Prodigy chip, hence hooking up with OEUHPC.

Danilak added: "As a member of the OEUHPC Project, together we can ascertain how to best extract maximum performance from underlying hardware fabrics, to deliver vastly more computationally powerful and energy efficient data centres which can change the face of the industry."

The proof, as is said, will be in the pudding. ®

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