Team develops 1,000-core processor. Yes, really.  Posted by Kate
Taylor  University of Glasgow scientists have created an ultra-
fast 1,000-core processor which they say can run at 20 times the
speed of current processors.  Dr Wim Vanderbauwhede and his team
used a Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) and divided up the
transistors within it into small groups, thereby creating more
than 1,000 mini-circuits within the FPGA chip.  The researchers
were then able to use the chip to process an algorithm  central
to the MPEG movie format at a speed of five gigabytes per
second.  "FPGAs are not used within standard computers because
they are fairly difficult to program, but their processing power
is huge while their energy consumption is very small because
they are so much quicker – so they are also a greener option,"
said Dr Vanderbauwhede.  Traditional multi-core processors must
share access to one memory source, which slows the system down.
But the Glasgowe team was able to make the processor faster by
giving each