# New microchip demonstrates efficiency and scalable design



## ekim68 (Jul 8, 2003)

> Princeton University researchers have developed a new computer chip that promises to boost the performance of data centers that lie at the core of numerous online services such as email and social media.





> The current version of the Piton chip measures 6 millimeters by 6 millimeters. The chip has more than 460 million transistors, each of which are as small as 32 nanometers - too small to be seen by anything but an electron microscope. The bulk of these transistors are contained in 25 cores. Most personal computer chips have four or eight cores. In general, more cores mean faster processing times, so long as software ably exploits the hardware's available cores to run operations in parallel. Therefore, computer manufacturers have turned to multi-core chips to squeeze further gains out of conventional approaches to computer hardware.


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