Skip to main content

Intel, move over — this may be the most powerful CPU ever

Tachyum has just announced the Prodigy T16128 Universal Processor, a CPU that comes with 128 cores and a whole lot of computing power.

Although you won’t be able to install it inside your desktop PC, it may be a serious competitor for Intel in the high-performance computing (HPC) arena.

A view inside a dark data center.
Google

The specifications of Tachyum’s Prodigy CPU are truly mind-boggling. The flagship variant comes with 128 64-bit CPU cores that can hit speeds of up to 5.7GHz. It also comes with 16 DDR5 memory controllers and 64 PCIe 5.0 lanes. As can be seen from the specs, this is a processor you may find in places that require high-performance computing.

Recommended Videos

According to Tachyum, Prodigy is the first “universal processor” in the world. It can tackle A.I. and machine learning workloads alongside various other computing tasks, and we truly mean the most taxing tasks you can imagine — after all, it wasn’t made so monstrously powerful for nothing.

While it sounds impressive on paper, Intel and Nvidia both have their own HPC offerings that can do the job. But Tachyum seems convinced that it made something far better. It stands out by being an all-in-one kind of chip that can run all manner of tasks, but it’s a lot more power-conservative than its rivals and seems to have been produced at a much lower cost.

As reported by Tom’s Hardware, Tachyum promises to deliver performance that’s up to four times better than the Intel Xeon 8470 as well as triple the performance of Nvidia’s H100 in HPC workloads. This kind of performance is made possible by the chip’s innovative architecture.

Most server hardware made by Tachyum’s well-known competitors, such as Nvidia, Intel, and AMD, is focused on performing individual tasks with little overlap. Simply put, each little block has its own task, and data has to be transferred from one block to the next in order for everything to function. Tachyum took a different approach with the Prodigy and it will be capable of running all kinds of resource-heavy workloads within a single chip on individual cores.

Intel Xeon silicon.
Image used with permission by copyright holder

The ability to multitask to such an extent without relying on other hardware is nothing short of impressive, and given the allegedly low pricing of the server chip, it could really break new ground and rival Intel processors in a major way. Toning down the power consumption in comparison to Intel also equals a lower cost to use Tachyum, not just to buy it. After all, this means that companies may be able to pack more of these chips, increasing their capabilities.

The top chip in the lineup is said to be able to perform 12 A.I. PetaFLOPs and 90 TeraFLOPs worth of HPC workloads. Tom’s Hardware compares this to Nvidia’s A100, and the results are undeniable — the A100 maxes out at 5 A.1. PetaFLOPs.

Tachyum Prodigy was built from scratch with matrix and vector processing capabilities. As a result, it can support an impressive range of different data types, such as FP64, FP32, BF16, FP8, and TF32. It also comes with 128MB of combined L2 and L3 cache. We know that it features a 5nm process node, but we do not know the source.

This beastly CPU range will also be available in a 64-core and 32-core variant, but the launch is not happening just yet. Production is set to begin in 2023.

Monica J. White
Monica is a computing writer at Digital Trends, focusing on PC hardware. Since joining the team in 2021, Monica has written…
Intel needed a win — its new laptop CPU delivers just that
An MSI laptop sitting on a table.

It feels cliche at this point, but it's true. Intel can't catch a break. The new Arrow Lake-H chips feel like a tide shift for Team Blue, though, leveraging the highly efficient architectures the company debuted with Lunar Lake to deliver performance and battery life worthy of the best laptops on the market.
By the numbers
We've already seen what Intel's Lunar Lake processors are capable of -- read our Asus Zenbook S 14 review for more on that -- but these new Arrow Lake-H offerings are a bit different. Under the hood, Intel is still using its Lion Cove and Skymont core architectures, which Arrow Lake-H shares with Lunar Lake. However, these chips get a larger core count, higher power budget, and beefier integrated graphics based on Intel's Battlemage architecture.

The power budget is really important here. The base power is 45W, but Intel allows the chip to boost up to 115W for short periods of time. The core split is interesting, too. You get 16 total cores, but they're split between six performance cores, eight efficient cores, and two low-power efficient cores. If you remember, the efficient cores are actually the main performance driver in this architecture, so the extra two low-power ones are simply there for a little extra multi-core grunt.

Read more
Nvidia may soon bid farewell to its most popular GPU
Two RTX 4060 graphics cards sitting next to each other.

Nvidia's RTX 50-series is right around the corner -- but this means that some of the current best graphics cards will soon be hard to come by. According to a post on the Board Channels forums, several of Nvidia's most popular RTX 40-series GPUs will soon be gone, including the budget-friendly RTX 4060.

We've heard reports of Nvidia slowly sunsetting the majority of its last-gen lineup over the past few months. The RTX 4090 was the first to go, and according to unofficial sources, the RTX 4080 and the RTX 4070 (including their Super and Ti variants) have already ceased production. As per leaks shared on the Board Channels, the only GPUs that are still being produced are the RTX 4060 and its Ti version -- but not for long.

Read more
Nvidia may enter the Arm CPU market after all
Nividia Project Digits on a desktop

According to a recent Reuters report, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang has hinted at broader ambitions for the Arm-based CPU within the GB10 Grace Blackwell chip, developed in collaboration with MediaTek. During an investor presentation, Huang alluded to plans for the new desktop CPU by saying, “You know, obviously we have plans.” However, he also added that he would “wait to tell [us]” the details. Cryptic as it may be, this message -- combined with Nvidia's recent developments -- could mean Nvidia might have serious plans for the CPU market.

Huang also noted that MediaTek, the chip's co-developer, has its own aspirations. “They could provide [the CPU] to us, or they could keep it for themselves and serve the market. It was a great win-win,” Huang said, suggesting MediaTek might market the chip independently.

Read more